WE had originally intended to take tickets for Oran, but finding that the Spahis, if weather permitting, stopped at a little town called Nemours, we resolved to stop there. By this plan we saved ourselves a day and a night at sea, and alighted at a point on the African coast much nearer Tclemcen than Oran. The weather favoured us. When we awoke next morning the sun shone bright and warm in a cloudless sky, and the steamer was gliding gently as a swan over the still, lake-like waters.

This sea-passage between Gibraltar and Oran is a dull one, and in our case it was especially so, as we were the only first-class passengers, excepting an old French gentleman, an employÉ of the Imperial Messagerie Company, who, with his son and daughter-in-law—a bride of a few days—was bound also to Nemours.

One great resource was a bundle of English newspapers kindly supplied to us at Gibraltar, and we pored over them from morning till the early twilight, when there was a ringing of bells and a smell of dinner, and an air of liveliness among the little company on board.

I joined the table d’hÔte, and found it very amusing. The captain had travelled all over the world, and had evidently made use of his eyes and ears everywhere, and the bridal party were by no means dull. After dinner the father-in-law ordered champagne, and the officers were invited in to drink the health of the little bride. She, poor child, was a little overcome, what with her new honour as Madame, sea-sickness, and the prospect of exile at Nemours; but all the rest were merry enough, and when we retired to our cabin we heard their talk and laughter till late in the night. There was not much time to sleep, for about three o’clock we were told to dress ourselves in readiness for the boat, and an hour later we went on deck. It was cold and fine. The sea was perfectly calm, but we heard it breaking on the shore with an angry, threatening sound, and we saw in the dim, grey light, what a rocky coast it was, and what a barrier there was, against which the smoothest sea could not break silently. Nemours is, indeed, no harbour, but a mere rade, and only approachable in the calmest weather, and by small boats. A hard pull our good boatmen had of it ere we could reach the landing-place, and the poor bride shivered in her thin summer dress.

“I was married in such a hurry,” she had said to me, “that mamma had no time to prepare anything, and all my clothes are to be sent after me;” but it seemed to me that a good warm shawl for the sea-journey would not have required much preparation. However, we wrapped her up in spare rugs and great-coats, and I think she took no harm.

We had to be carried ashore one at a time, and I thought of Gilliat, and of the sea-faring life Victor Hugo has portrayed so fantastically, when savage-looking men, their bare limbs shining like bronze in the pearly light, dashed into the water, and bore us to the strand as easily as if we were babies.

Much as we had enjoyed Spain, how glad we were to find ourselves in France again, especially in African France!—to find ourselves speaking, as it were, our native language, and not having to try at the stately Spanish phrase, to hear the friendly French voice, and see the friendly French faces around us, to know that wherever we went, we were really and truly welcome, and that we might do exactly as we liked without being thought extraordinary!

We found Nemours just like any other little French town in Algeria, very formal and neat, with a little square, a little church, and boulevards in their babyhood, and a certain indescribable air of order and importance about it. We went straight to the inn—I think it was called l’HÔtel des Voyageurs—and, after knocking once or twice, the landlord came down, very shaggy and sleepy, but pleasant and amiable, as Frenchmen always are. He went out at once to his neighbour, the baker’s, and came back with a pan of red-hot ashes, which was very clever of him, for we were bitterly cold, and nothing else would so effectually have heated the room. Then he brought us out a bottle of good Bordeaux and excellent bread and Rochefort cheese; and by the time we had finished our meal, there was a clean bedroom ready for us and hot water: and what more does a weary traveller require? The douane did not choose to wake up and give us our luggage till late in the morning; it was such a lazy douane; and though I went again and again, and said pretty things to the gendarmes, it was of no use. They said pretty things in return, but kept the luggage. At last the douane chose to wake up and open its doors, and we got our portmanteaus, and were able to get at brushes and combs and clean dresses, and to sit down to breakfast clothed and in our right minds.

Then we obtained the services of an old soldier as guide, and went out to see something of Nemours. The weather was perfect, and our guide just the person to make you feel in a new world. He had something unexpected to tell us about everything; the people of Nemours, the past of Nemours, and the present aspect of French-African colonization collectively.

A bright blue sea, glistening white sands, and bold dark rocks, will make any place beautiful; but, otherwise, Nemours is uninteresting enough. It is only when you are outside the town, and breathing the air of the wild desolated hills, that you understand the romance of the place. For the history of Nemours, if written with a vigorous pen, would abound in incidents as thrilling as any conceived by the author of Monte Christo, or of The Last of the Mohicans.

We passed through the town, and were just entering upon a picturesque gorge, when our guide pointed to a little farm-house that peeped sunnily from its orchards and gardens, and said,—

“Do you see a great patch of new whitewash, just above the door yonder?”

“Yes, we see it.”

“Eh, bien! I will tell you the history of that patch of new whitewash. A good colonist lived in that house, and was murdered a few weeks back by the Arabs. He went to bed as usual, first having seen that every lock was secure, and that his pistol was loaded—for only fools go unarmed here by night or day—and at midnight woke suddenly, hearing the dogs bark and the cocks crowing. ‘The Arabs!’ he says to his wife, who wakes up too, and then he takes up his pistol and throws open the window, ready to scare the scoundrels away. But before he can do it, he is shot through his head, and his blood and brains are all over the wall, and so it had to be whitewashed as you see.”

“And the poor widow, and the guilty Arabs?”

“The widow lives there still. The poor can’t indulge in fine feelings, you see, Madame, and must stay where their bread is to be earned. The Arabs got away to Morocco—they can do it in a few hours from here—and voilÀ l’histoire!”

“A sad history indeed!”

“And not the saddest I could tell you. Ah! Madame, the life of us poor colonists here on the borders of Morocco is hard enough. Only the good God knows how to understand how hard it is” (le bon Dieu sait seul comment c’est dur.)

“On account of the great insecurity, you mean?”

“Yes, Madame. We have to keep watch-dogs as fierce as tigers, to look well to our bolts and pistols before going to bed, to distrust an Arab as le diable, and, withal, we are always being burned out, robbed, assassinated; and those who burn us out, rob us, and assassinate us, as often as not get across to Morocco safe and sound.”

“But the soldiers protect you?”

“Mon Dieu, Madame! the soldiers have hard work to protect themselves! and the soldiers, you see, are not always hand and glove with the colonists. I often think we should do better in Algeria without soldiers at all. Being a colon myself now, I speak for the colons, of course.”

We were now in a wild and beautiful spot at some distance from the town. On either side rose green hills, sharply shutting in a little river that flowed amid tamarisk and oleander, and, here and there, shone the round white dome of some small Moorish sanctuary.

We sat down to rest a little while and enjoy the perfect solitude of the place, and sketch the nearest of the mosques or marabouts.

“Ah! that is a marabout which will never be forgotten as long as the French hold Oran. A few years ago there was sharp fighting in these parts, and the Arabs, who were very strong, contrived to get a few hundred of our brave fellows here by some diabolical cunning or other, and, being thousands themselves, mowed them down like so much standing corn. But this is only one story of hundreds. If blood of the bravest would make lands rich, we ought to have fine crops here, indeed, Madame.”

“The Arabs seem a very savage set here,” one of us said. “Around Algiers they are, for the most part, harmless.”

“Il y a des Arabes et des Arabes. VoilÀ, Madame. We are close on Morocco. The Arabs who have burned, murdered, and stolen in other places flee hither, and so we are in a sort of Botany Bay of ’em.”

Just as he spoke a wild figure came running down the mountain side, and made towards us, gesticulating, crying aloud, shaking his shaggy hair, laughing a horrible laugh. So brown he was, and so uncouth an object, that it seemed belying alike Frenchman and Arab to class him as either. Instinctively we started and drew back.

“Don’t be alarmed, ladies,” said our old soldier, with a smile; “it’s only a poor madman—he is harmless enough if not teazed. Bon soir, bon soir, PÈre Michie, Ça va bien; tu vas te promener? C’est Ça. Allons!” And the poor creature mouthed and laughed and went his way. This was the only person we met in that solitary walk. When we returned, the short, bright day was drawing to a close, and we were so tired that we were even glad to lie down and shut out the glorious colours that spread in fiery flakes across the sky, and the purple sea, that seemed like another firmament in its immovableness and depth, and the large pale stars that seemed to belong to both.

The stars were not pale when we arose next morning at three o’clock to start for Tclemcen; it was worth one’s while to rise at that hour, if only to see them, so large and brilliant and wonderful were they; and shining out of heavens, neither blue, nor purple, nor black, but indescribably beautiful. Never shall I forget that journey from Nemours to Tclemcen. The day seemed interminable. First of all, we had the long, long reign of stars,—stars that dazzled like suns, mildly luminous, moonlike stars, and pale, primrose-coloured stars, that trembled and heralded the dawn. Then we had the dawn,—a long, grey, cold dawn that seemed a day in itself, and then the blessed sun, warming the day into perfect ripeness, as if it were a flower, and then the twilight again, with new stars.

But if the longest day of our lives, it was by no means the least pleasant. The weather, as usual (for, I think, in point of weather, travellers were never so fortunate as ourselves!), was all that could be desired, warm, breezy, and bracing, and there was recreation for heart and brain in the region through which we passed. Every feature and aspect of the country was new to us. We had never before seen anything like these undulating wastes of sand, and these interminable plateaux of stone and grass, all bathed in the mellowest, warmest, most golden light. The light was one long surprise to us. We looked up at some sheep browsing on a rocky ledge, and they seemed turned into copper images of sheep; and not the mere white woolly things they are generally figured to be. We looked from a bit of rising ground across a broad steppe of sand and stone, and we could hardly believe that the sun was not setting, so yellow it was, and so full of misty, delicious warmth. Everything seemed transfigured, and the transfiguration was almost blinding. We were alone in the coupÉ of the diligence, and the only passenger in the rotunda was a stately CaÏd, magnificently dressed in purple gaudoura and white bernous of softest, silkiest Algerian manufacture. But what was the magnificence of his dress to the magnificence of his complexion? To understand what an Arab complexion is, one must have seen it, as we saw it, bronzing and glowing under a southern sky. Transported to canvas or cold climates, the rich hue loses half its life and warmth and beauty.

When we alighted, the CaÏd invariably alighted too, and he would smile down grandly upon us, as if we were children, and say a complacent word or two in broken French, as if he thought we were afraid of him. We were sorry enough that we could not talk with him, and tell him how far we had come to see the great works of the Moors in Spain and Tclemcen. Our driver was as picturesque as the CaÏd, and almost as silent. I think he was a Breton by his style of face, which was full of character and nobility, and such as Rembrandt would have painted. He wore a fur cap, very rich in colours, and a light blue coat of quaint shape, bordered with the same sort of fur. Anything finer or more poetic than this man’s appearance, I had never seen. But, beyond the courtesy of offering us some of his wine, when we asked for water, he hardly opened his lips.

For the most part, the country was uncultivated and uninhabited. There was no foliage excepting that of stunted olive, tamarisk, and palmetto, and nothing to break the universal monotony but here and there a douar, or Arab village, consisting of a cluster of tents, hedged in by walls of wild cactus, or haulm. Whenever we passed close to such a douar, the dogs would rush out yelling and barking, the whole little brown-skinned community would come to the road-side and stare us out of sight. The younger children were generally naked, though such a brown skin seems a sort of clothing in itself, and the elder ones had nothing on but one cutty-sark, of coarse sacking or woollen stuff. The men and women were decently clothed, and would greet us with a grave “Salamalek!” or “Bon jour!” whilst the children, veriest imps of fun and impudence, ran after the carriage, begging for a sou as long as their breath would carry them.

We reached Tclemcen about six o’clock, and established ourselves at the HÔtel de France, a cool, pleasant, roomy house, where they gave us large rooms and Algerian fare, and gracious Algerian courtesy. We could willingly have stayed at Tclemcen for months.