In the Land of Mosques & Minarets. Mansfield Milburg Francisco

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ seeks the sunny side of a wall and basks there, watching things grow, smoking much tobacco and drinking much coffee, each of these narcotics very black and strong. Four months later his ample, or meagre, crop comes by chance. Then he flays it, not by means of a flail swung by hand, but by borrowing a little donkey from some neighbour, – if he hasn’t one of his own, – and letting the donkey’s hoofs trample it out. Now he takes it – or most likely sends it – to market, and his year’s work is done. He rolls over to the shady side of his gourbi (the sunny side is getting too warm) and loafs along until another autumn. He might grow maize in the interval, but he doesn’t.

      The Barbary fig, or prickly-pear cactus, is everywhere in Algeria and Tunisia. It grows wild by the roadside, in great fields, and as a barrier transplanted to the top of the universal mud walls. Frost is its only enemy. Everything and everybody else flees before it except the native who eats its spiny, juicy bulbs and finds them good. The rest of us only find the spines, and throw the fruit away in disgust when we attempt to taste it. The Barbary fig is the Arab’s sole food supply when crops fail, the only thing which stands between him and starvation – unless he steals dates or figs from some richer man’s plantation. The Arab’s wants are not great, and with fifty francs and some ingenuity he can live a year.

      The palm-trees of Africa number scores of varieties, but those of the Mediterranean states and provinces, the date-bearing palm, come within three well-defined classes: the Phœnix-dactylifera, the chamaerops-humilis and the cucifera-thebaica.

      Even the smallest Arab proprietor of land or sheep or goats pays taxes. The French leave its collection to the local Caïds or Sheiks, but it gets into the official coffers ultimately, – or most of it does.

      In Algeria there are four principal taxes, or impôts:

      The Achour on cereals; the Zekai, on sheep and cattle to-day, but originally a tax collected for the general good, as prescribed by the Koran; the Hokar (in Constantine), a tax on land; the Lezma, the generic term for various contributions, such as the right to carry firearms (the only tax levied in Kabylie), and the tax on date-palms in the Sud-Algérie and Sud-Oranais. The Arab carries a gun only after he gets a permit, which he must show every time he buys powder or shot.

      In Tunisia the taxes are much the same; but there is a specific tax on olive-trees as well as date-palms, and on the markets and the products sold there.

      The wines of Algeria and Tunisia are the product of foreign vines whose roots were transplanted here but little more than half a century ago. These vines came from all parts, from France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Malta and America; and now the “vin d’Algérie” goes out to the ends of the earth, – usually under the name of a cru more famous. It is very good wine nevertheless, this rich, hybrid juice of the grape; and, though the Provençal of Chateauneuf, the sons of the Aude, the Garde and the Hérault, or the men of Roussillon do not recognize Algerian wine as a worthy competitor of their own vintages, it is such all the same. And the Peroximen, supposed to be a product only of Andalusia, and the Muscatel of Alexandria, are very nearly as good grown on Algerian soil as when gathered in the place of their birth.

      The “vin rosé” of Kolea, the really superb wines of Médea, and the “vin blanc de Carthage,” should carry the fame of these North African vintages to all who are, or think they are, judges of good wine.

      With such a rich larder at their very doors, the mediæval Mediterranean nations were in a constant quarrel over its possession. Vandals and Greeks fought for the right to populate it after the Romans, but the Moorish wave was too strong; the Arab crowded the Berber to the wall and made him a Mussulman instead of a Christian, a religious faith which the French have held inviolate so far as proselytizing goes. It is this one fundamental principle which has done much to make the French rule in Algeria the success that it is. Britain should leave religion out of her colonizing schemes if she would avoid the unrest which is continually cropping up in various parts of the empire; and the United States should leave the friars of the Philippines alone, and let them grow fat if they will, and develop the country on business lines. We are apt to think that the French are slow in business matters, but they get results sometimes in an astonishingly successful manner, and by methods which they copy from no one.

      The ports of Algeria and Tunisia are of great antiquity. The Romans, not content with the natural advantages offered as harbours, frequently cut them out of the soft rock itself, or built out jetties or quais, as have all dock engineers since when occasion demanded. There are vestiges of these old Roman quais at Bougie, at Collo, at Cherchell, at Stora and at Bona. These Roman works, destroyed or abandoned at the Vandal invasion, were never rebuilt; and the great oversea traders of the Italian Republics, of France and of Spain, merely hung around offshore and transacted their business, as do the tourist steamers at Jaffa to-day, while their personally conducted hordes descend upon Jerusalem and the Jordan.

      The Barbary pirates had little inlets and outlets which they alone knew, and flitted in and out of on their nefarious projects; but only at Algiers, until in comparatively recent times, were there any ports or harbours, legitimately so called, in either Algeria or Tunisia, though the Spaniards, when in occupation of Oran in the eighteenth century, made some inefficient attempts towards waterside improvements of a permanent character.

      In thinking of North Africa it is well to recall that it is not a tropical belt, nor even a subtropical one. It is very like the climate of the latitude of Washington, though perhaps with less rain in winter. It is not for a moment to be compared with California or Bermuda.

      The temperature on the Algerian coast is normally as follows: —

      As compared with the temperature of the French Riviera, taking Nice as an example, the balance swings in favour of Algeria in winter, and a trifle against it for summer, as the following figures show: —

      One pertinent observation on North Africa is that regarding the influx of outside civilizing influences. The American invasion of manufactured products is here something considerable; but as yet it has achieved nothing like its possibilities, save perhaps in electrical tramway installation, sewing machines and five-gallon tins of kerosene. The French have got North Africa, mostly; the Germans the trade in cutlery; the English (or the Scotch) that in whiskey and marmalade; but the American shipments of “Singers” and “Standards” must in total figures swamp any of the other single “foreign imports” in value. One does not speak of course of imports from France. As the argument of the dealers, who push the sewing-machine into the desert gourbis of the nomads and the mountain dwellings of the Kabyles, has it, the civilizing influences of Algeria have been railways, public schools and “Singers.” What progressive Arab could be expected to resist such an argument for progress, with easy-payment terms of a franc a week as the chief inducement? The only objection seems to be that his delicately fashioned, creamy, woollen burnous of old is fast becoming a ready-made “lock-stitch” affair, which lacks the loving marks of the real hand-made article. Other things from America are agricultural machinery, ice-cream freezers, oil-stoves, corn meal, corned beef, salmon from Seattle, and pickles from Bunker Hill. As yet the trade in these “staples” is infinitesimal when compared with what it might be if “pushed,” which it is not because all these things come mostly through London warehouse men, who “push” something else when they can.

      A few things America will not be able to sell in North Africa are boots and shoes, the Arab wears his neatly folded down at the heel, and ours are not that kind; nor socks, nor stockings, the Arab buys a gaudy “near-silk,” made in the Vosges, when he buys any, and the women don’t wear them; nor hats, though a Stetson, No. 7, would please them mightily, all but the price. There is no demand for folding-beds or elastic bookcases. The Arab sleeps on the floor, and the only СКАЧАТЬ