Dedication
To
My Daughter
BETTIE
In memory of the days
when we rode across
the desert
Foreword
Unlike most of my preceding volumes, this book deals with countries which are comparatively near to home. Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco—which we know collectively as Barbary—lie at the very door of Europe; their principal ports are scarcely more than overnight from Naples, Barcelona, and Marseilles; scores of tourist steamers drop anchor in their harbors every winter, and they are visited by increasing numbers of Americans each year. Yet it is a curious fact, and one difficult to explain, that the popular misconceptions regarding these easily accessible lands are even more glaring than those in respect to far remoter regions which the white man penetrates at every risk.
The truth of the matter is that most Americans, and most Europeans too for that matter, think of Barbary in terms of the corsairs, the Garden of Allah, the dancing-girls of the Ouled-Naïl, the Foreign Legion, Raisuli and Perdicaris, the squalor and confusion of Europeanized Tangier, the Riff and Abd-el-Krim, the luxurious resort hotels of Algiers, the Street of the Perfume-Sellers in Tunis, Moroccan leather-work, camels, tiled gateways, the utterly impossible sheikhs described by Mrs. Hull and interpreted by Hollywood, and the sand-dunes so frequently pictured in the “National Geographic Magazine.” With our unfortunate propensity for generalizing, we have assumed that these high spots were typical of Barbary, thus forming a mental picture which is as fantastic as it is inaccurate.
For example, we speak of the inhabitants of North Africa as Arabs, who in reality are only a minority, the bulk of the population being composed of Berbers, the earliest known possessors of the soil, who still hold the highlands which stretch from the borders of Egypt to the shores of the Atlantic, from the sands of the Mediterranean to those of the Sahara, that vast extent of territory to which we have given their name, Barbary.
We think of the Berbers as crude and uncultured, as barbaric, bloodthirsty, and backward as were the American Indians. Yet before America was so much as heard of, they, not the Arabs or the Saracens, had raised at Granada and Seville those glorious buildings which are among the architectural triumphs of the world.
Because of their sun-tanned skins, and recalling, perhaps, the old term “blackamoor,” we assume that the Berbers are a colored race and are astounded when we are told that they are of pure Caucasian stock, racially as white as ourselves.
Because it is in Africa we take it for granted that Barbary swelters in a torrid climate, whereas it is a cold country with a hot sun. In Algeria the week after Easter I have seen snow several inches deep, and the mountains to the south of Marrákesh are topped with snow nearly the whole year round.
Most of us think of Morocco as a treeless, semi-arid, almost level land, yet it has vast forests of oak and pine, several rivers comparable with the Thames or the Hudson, and in the spring its prairies and hill-slopes are carpeted with countless varieties of wild flowers. Far from being level, it is a highly mountainous country; the Moroccan Atlas has a greater average height than the Alps, and at least one of its peaks is higher than any mountain in the United States outside of Alaska.
We ourselves went to war in ’98 to end the intolerable rule of Spain in the Western Hemisphere, yet the propaganda skilfully disseminated from Madrid and Paris has blinded us to the fact that Abd-el-Krim and his mountaineers of the Riff were fighting for precisely the same reason for which the Cubans fought—to throw off the yoke of Spanish tyranny and cruelty.
Because in the geographies of our school-days large portions of North Africa were painted a speckled yellow, and because of the pictures of sand-dunes reproduced in certain magazines, we habitually picture the Sahara as a trackless waste of orange sand, on which grows no living thing, little realizing that it is broken by mile-high mountain ranges and dotted with oases, some of them as large as a New England State, which support thousands of inhabitants and millions of date-palms.
Basing our idea on motion-pictures made in Hollywood, and on novels of the desert school of fiction, we imagine sheikhs—and for heaven’s sake pronounce it shakes instead of sheeks!—as romantic, picturesque, debonair gentlemen with chivalrous instincts and charming manners, whereas candor compels me to assert that most of them are blackguardly ruffians, lustful, cruel, vindictive, ignorant, debased, as filthy of mind as of body.
We have long accepted as gospel the assertion that the British are the only really successful colonizers in the world; the French colonial we have pictured as a miserable being who spends his days in a hammock, sipping absinthe, reading “La Vie Parisienne,” and counting the hours until he can return to la belle France. Yet, in the space of a single generation, these miserable and inefficient beings have in Africa alone conquered and consolidated and civilized a colonial empire greater in area than the United States and all of its possessions put together.
And, finally, we cling to the delusion that Barbary, though doubtless colorful and picturesque, is deficient in monuments of historical or architectural interest, and that the facilities provided for the comfort of the traveler are limited and somewhat crude. Let me remark, by way of answering this objection, that Tunisia is as thickly strewn with Roman ruins as Italy itself; that the scenery of the Grand Kabylia and the High Atlas is as impressive as any in Switzerland; that the mosques and towers and palaces of Morocco were built by the same race which raised the Alhambra and the Alcázar; that the network of motor-roads which cover Barbary compare very favorably with the best highways we have in the United States; and that the hotels which have sprung up all the way from Tunis to Marrákesh are not far removed in luxury from the great tourist hostelries of Florida and California.
Extremely misleading too have been the pictures of political conditions in North Africa as drawn by certain members of self-styled “American missions,” who have visited the country at the invitation of the government, have been dazzled by fêtes and flatteries, and have swallowed the propaganda assiduously fed them by their hosts. I yield to none in my admiration for what France has achieved in North Africa, but to assert, as have certain American visitors, that the natives are contented with French rule and would give their life’s blood to defend it is to take wholly unjustifiable liberties with the truth.
It is to correct the current misapprehensions in regard to Barbary, some of which are alluded to above, that I have written this book.
I am perfectly aware that the countries to which the following pages are devoted have been treated of many times, and that my pages contain nothing that is startling, little that is really new. But I can at least make this claim for my book, that it is the only one, so far as I am aware, which brings the whole of French North Africa, its history, peoples, customs, places of interest, resources, and politics, between two covers. During my last two or three visits to Barbary I have been struck by the lack of such a book, and I have designed this one to fill a needed want.
Though I have used my last African journey, which occupied the winter, spring, and early summer of 1925, as a thread on which to string the incidents and impressions recorded in the ensuing chapters, it should be explained that much of my information was gathered during earlier visits, dating back to the early years of the present century. Hence I am in a position to make comparisons. For it has been my great good fortune to have seen the preliminary sketches as well as the completed picture. I was in the Sahara when it was still “the Last Frontier”; I knew Morocco as it was a decade before the white helmets came.
While having no desire to trespass on the field of Messrs. Baedeker, Murray, and Cook, I have nevertheless attempted to produce a volume which will be of real service to the casual traveler by incorporating definite information as to routes, hotels, and general travel conditions and by calling to his attention places which, though not always mentioned in the guide-books, are well worth seeing. I have also sketched the natural resources of the various regions and have endeavored to acquaint my readers with the highly involved political situations which exist in all of them. It may be said, by way of criticism, that my pages are overburdened with historical matter, but without the background of the Punic settlements, the Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, and Arab invasions, and the activities of the corsairs, it is impossible to understand Barbary as it is under the French.
It may also be assumed by some that, as I was afforded numerous facilities by the French authorities, this book is a reflection of the French view. I would remind such critics that the remoter districts of North Africa are still in military occupation, forbidden to the casual traveler, and that they may be visited with the permission of the French military authorities or not at all. Though such permission was promptly granted whenever I requested it, and though French officials of all grades went out of their way to show me courtesies and extend assistance, my judgment has not been affected by the consideration I received, nor my views biased, as the following pages will testify. To much that the French have accomplished in North Africa I raise my hat in respect and admiration; of other phases of their policy I do not approve. In both cases I have spoken my mind freely. My opinions may not be worth much, but at least they are my own.
E. Alexander Powell.
Sugar Hill,
New Hampshire,
August, 1926.