Chapter XXXVII: Traveling Off the Beaten Track

Having now followed in the paths of the tourist and the official tours of the Compagnie Transatlantique, it will perhaps be interesting to cast a glance at the less-frequented routes. There is no doubt that once one leaves the beaten track in Algeria one travels in comparative discomfort, and that the accommodation is, to say the least of it, primitive. Neither is it necessary to go far from the main center to find these discomforts.

On the other hand, unless one has these experiences one does not get to know the real people of the country whether they be Arabs or Frenchmen. The true Algerian colonist is there in all his roughness, talking vaguely about France as a paradise, which he may never have seen, in spite of the little distance which separates Europe from North Africa; treating the natives with a curious mixture of comradeship and harshness, little interested in affairs not affecting his actual district, and as unlike an Englishman in the same situation as it is possible to imagine.

The common Arab, poor, ill-fed, lazy, working just as long as it is necessary, dishonest when it is worth while, and quite unscrupulous in matters of life and death, exists there with little ambition, while the Arab chiefs whom one has perhaps met in magnificent clothes at some official function live in these lost districts without any ostentation. The only method of communication between the villages, and they are usually some sixty or eighty miles apart, is by road. Some of the richer cultivators and _caïds_ have motor-cars; the well-to-do Arab rides, but it is usual to travel by the motor _diligence_ which carries the mails. The _diligence_ usually starts early in the morning, as, though it travels a good twenty miles an hour, there is always the danger of a breakdown with no question of outside help, and as they are under government contract it is essential that they should have plenty of time to spare.

The bus is almost full at the start, but it expands its accommodation in a most astonishing way as it picks up travelers who sit by the roadside, and when it arrives at its destination the roof and the running-boards are crowded with Arabs. People who have correspondence for the post also wait at appointed places with their letters, which are collected by the driver and taken along. And in the same way the mail for the districts where there are no roads is picked up by the postman as the _diligence_ dashes by.

Occasionally in years of famine there are holdups, and though the driver is always armed, it is of little avail. The road is barred at some convenient spot where there is cover, the _diligence_ stops, and before any one realizes what has occurred the track is seething with Arabs armed with blunder-busses and bludgeons, who take all there is, puncture the tires and disappear as mysteriously as they came.

Another form of delay is often created in summer by locusts, which drift in great clouds across the road and in an inconceivably short space of time clog up all the wheels with the fat of their crushed bodies. And it is extremely difficult to clear them out and go on if they are in any numbers.

The arrival of the _diligence_ in a small center is a great event. The postmaster, who is also the telegrapher and postman and bookkeeper, comes out with much dignity to receive the mail; Arabs crowd round and gossip with the occupants of the second-class compartment or with those on the roof; the tall gendarme walks up and down with a look of imminent arrest on his mustached countenance. At the terminus there is the same sensation while the European traveler, stiff and dusty, wends his way to the only inn. It is always a “Grand” Hotel “Something” with from twelve to twenty rooms. There are many which are simply comfortable, where one gets a good _cuisine bourgeoise_; these are among the smaller and more remote and kept by a family of French people, the father looking after the café, the mother cooking, the children doing all the rest of the work. Meals are served at a common table with the family. The rooms are sparsely furnished, but they are clean. But there are many hotels where hygiene is unknown, where the food is cooked by an Arab and is foully oily, and the rooms! . . . Too much or too little can not be said about them, and the traveler is advised to cast the well-used sheets into the farthest corner of the chamber, place the mattress on the floor, put on his longest pair of trousers and his stoutest boots and wrap himself up in his cloak. If he is fortunate he will rise next morning immune from the night attack of the denizens of the bedstead, but that is all.

Market-day is the time to see these little towns at their best. It usually takes place on a Friday, the Mohammedan Sunday, and from midday Thursday long caravans of Arabs with their flocks begin appearing on the horizon and move slowly across the wide plain toward the market town. Camels pad disdainfully along while the humble donkey trots beside, great flocks of white sheep with their advance guard of goats throwing up clouds of dust. The roads too have their complement of travelers, and carriages and carts jolt along bearing Arabs and French farmers; there are also horsemen and pedestrians, while the motor-car and the _diligence_ bring buyers from Algiers.

It is a marvelous sight to see the streets of the little town thronged with every type of Arab. Clear-eyed men from the nomad tribes of the Larbas, and the Chambas in the far south; tall men with haughty looks from the mountains, thin, wiry men from the rolling plains of the Sersou, stout little Mzabites, pale and bearded, selling their wares to the credulous Arabs as their Phœnician ancestors did in the same land two thousand years ago. Here and there an Arab chief— an _agha_ or a _caïd_—in a brilliant cloth burnous, moves in stately manner, greeting friends with the brotherly embrace and receiving the kiss of submission on the shoulder from the members of his tribe with as much dignity as a king of old accepting homage from his vassals.

When night falls the little hotel is full of bronzed-faced colonists and wool merchants and sheep breeders, discussing the prospects of the harvest and the probable price of wool and livestock over glasses of anisette and water. The scene in the café is really a most entertaining spectacle of all classes and races mingling in friendly chat.

Sometimes there is an Arab flutist from the far south earning his dinner, sometimes there is a Spanish sheep-farmer with his guitar, sometimes there is a row among Arabs and one sees the glint of the steel dagger, which alone the children of the Faithful know how to wield with dexterous rapidity.

In the Arab coffee-houses too the animation is great, and the guests flow out into the streets and squat by the wall holding their cups of coffee or mint tea in their hands. Inside some one is singing a ballad, accompanied by a flute or a mandolin, while up the road one can hear the rhythmical beat of the _tam-tam_ and strident squeal of the _raïta_ of some rival establishment. Away in the dancing girls’ quarter the gaiety continues until the Arab policeman, blowing on his trumpet, sends all the Faithful to bed, for the most part under the bright stars.

At dawn the city is astir, the coffee-houses are again open, and the shepherds are gathering about the _fondouks_, where they have lodged their animals for the night. The more thrifty, who have preferred to sleep out on the plains with their flocks rather than pay lodging to the _fondouk_ keeper, are already on the market-place, a broad open area clear of the city.

There are twenty thousand ewes and as many lambs to be sold to-day. It is an amazing sight to see hundreds of flocks herded together, with here and there a black patch where stand the goats. A little apart from the sheep is the donkey market—poor little beasts blinking patiently in the sun, while a little farther on the camels groan and gurgle as if they resented being vulgarly disposed of in a sheep-market.

All the Arab chiefs and the Frenchmen from the hotel are there moving about the flocks, looking at teeth, examining fleeces, feeling backs. Prices which during the early hours have been unstable, settle down toward seven, and the serious buying begins. The sun rises up in the heavens and blazes down on the great concourse of white-robed shepherds. Then gradually as the purchases are completed, the various buyers separate their lots from the general herd and drive them into different groups away from the main market.

And now there is a flow of people in the opposite direction, the sellers are being paid, the cafés are filling up again, the more thrifty are investing their money in barley or clothes, the generous are purchasing scarfs for their women. As the afternoon draws on, the caravans begin reforming and moving off across the great plain, little groups of sheep and camels can be seen following the long straight tracks. By sunset the town has once more dwindled to its normal population, the coffee-sellers and the Mzabite grocers are counting their profits, and flute players and dancing girls have retired to rest, and quiet reigns till the next market-day.

But though all this is picturesque and interesting and unusual, the European used to average comfort is glad to see the last of the gray _diligence_ as he is deposited at the nearest railway station, and he sinks back with a sigh of relief on the soft cushions of the first-class railway carriage.