El-Kantara—The Gateway of the Desert—Biskra—Its attractions—The dancing-girls-"Hichenstown"—A garden and a vision—Railway extension—Conquering Mohammedans—Sidi Okba—The Arab’s point of view.

From the watershed to the north of Batna the descent by road or rail is rapid to El-Kantara, where the mountain chain is riven by a deep and narrow gorge. It is called by the Arabs Foum-es-Sahara, the Mouth of the Sahara. The scenery is very striking; Nature is here in a theatrical mood; the mountains are bare and rugged and of a rich yellow hue, and as one emerges from the gorge the coup d’oeil is magnificent. Immediately in front is a lovely oasis, rich in palms and fruit trees, offering a delicious contrast of greenery to the rough weather-scarred rocks above. Around and below, to the southward, are the rugged foot-hills of the AurÈs, and beyond all the great illimitable sea of sand. This is one of those rare places of the earth where nature seems to set herself of deliberate intention to produce an effect. And nothing is wanting to its success; nothing is superfluous. No one could have planned a more fitting, a more impressive, a more romantic, gateway to the desert.

We continue to descend by the river, which is soon to meet its doom in the sand, through a strange country which suggests in its apparent absence of design the effect of some vast catastrophe,—"the quarries of an enormous desolation." From the seamed and wrinkled and time-worn cliffs, with their endless repetition of narrow buttresses, stand out weird pinnacles as might the ruins of a fantastic castle, or the fangs of some huge primeval monster, “the dead bones of the eldest born of time”; while the floor of the valley is covered with curiously regular pyramidal heaps, which bear the semblance of man’s fashioning. Such a landscape might serve for a poet’s or painter’s Inferno; such may be the scenery of the moon. Little by little we leave this nightmare of the foot-hills and emerge into the plain. We pass several little oases, and traverse sandy areas with scanty scrub. The river, or its bed, is ever with us, with here and there an oleander growing on its banks. Where water can be led away from it, a little ground is irrigated, and corn is sown. But ever we are tending to the open desert. And at last, when we have passed completely from all contact with the hills, and know that we have attained the great Sahara, at last we come to Biskra.

It is a little difficult to analyse the charm of Biskra. The charm is great and the attraction strong. They do not lie altogether in the brilliance of its sunshine, in the shade of its palms, in the richness of its colouring, in the exuberance of its life. These things we may meet elsewhere. Biskra has other qualities; it is barbaric, African to the core, tropical in its intensity.

Biskra is barbaric. To one entering by rail or road its trim streets and squares, and housing himself in a hostelry which might be anywhere within the bounds of the civilized world, this is a hard saying. Yet he may soon perceive that its veneer is very thin and understand that it is very transitory. A hot wind from the desert in April, and it is gone, and the real Biskra will reassert itself. But even during the months of the incursion of the hiverneurs, the barbaric note is never absent; to the ear that listens it is predominant; it rings more shrill by force of contrast. The troops of snarling camels, with their loads from the Great Beyond, the clash of African musicless music, the thronging crowds of jostling races in its markets, the hooded figures crouched motionless round its cafÉs, the bedizened native harlotry which stalks unashamed,—nay, proudly as mistress of the town,—in its streets; all are there to mark its essential savagery. A few hours ago in the upper lands behind the desert gateway we breathed the chill atmosphere of Europe; at Biskra we have passed the bounds; sun and sky and earth and man and outrageous woman combine to tell us that at last we have entered Africa.

It may be that therein lies Biskra’s attraction to the jaded European. It is all a little unnatural from the European point of view. There is a sense of walking on the slopes of a volcano, or of playing with fire; and if we may believe our novelists, European nature under its influence tends to eccentric and eruptive manifestations. Yet its frequenters exhibit little outward sign of disturbance. German tourists, arrayed indeed as if about to combat a Touareg onslaught, yet read novels peacefully in the pleasant seclusion of the hotel garden; the Kodak fiend stalks his prey; the traffic in post cards goes merrily along; but we cannot escape an uneasy feeling that this nonchalance is a cloak. Perhaps the novelists have got on our nerves.

Biskra consists of a modern French town and garrison, and several more or less distinct native villages grouped together on a large oasis, a strip of cultivated ground between three or four miles in length, with an average width of half a mile. It contains an immense number of palm trees, the chief source of wealth in the great Sahara. There is abundant water from springs, and during winter from the river, which conveys the snows of AurÈs to the desert, and is finally lost some miles further to the south. It has a swarming native population, of every North African race, and every hue. There is obviously a very great infusion of negro blood; no doubt because Biskra is situate on a highway of the nations, at a point where the caravan routes from the extreme south reach the mountain lands of Barbary. These natives of various races are collected in great numbers in the morning market, and throng the neighbouring cafÉs throughout the day, where squatting figures play interminable games of dominoes and backgammon. Conspicuous in the crowd are the dancing girls of the Ouled NaÏl tribe dressed in tawdry finery, hung with barbaric jewellery and masses of gold and silver coins, their hair mixed with wool and plastered with grease, their faces tattooed and darkened with khol and henna. These women delight their patrons with their danses À ventre in the CafÉs Maures at night, and later sit—waiting and watching—on little balconies in the street which is assigned to them. Many attempts have been made by French and English writers to shed a halo of romance over these unfortunate beings. The whitewashing of the harlot is a common literary pose. The story that they come to the desert towns to earn their dower and subsequently return to their own tribe and marry may have some foundation; such a procedure is not unknown in other parts of the world; but to judge from the appearance of some of them they are a long time thinking about settling down.

It may, at any rate, be said of these girls that they are not a mere “exploitation of local colour,” got up for the benefit of the tourist. They are a genuine native product, flourishing no less in the oases of the Sahara seldom visited by Europeans than under the shadow of the hotels of Biskra. Their danses excite their native admirers to great enthusiasm, they often provoke furious jealousies, and are sometimes the object of extraordinary prodigality. Some of them appear to affect an air trÈs grande dame. “Celles des Ouled-NaÏl qui sont de grande tente apportent dans leurs relations avec leurs visiteurs toute la gÉnÉrositÉ et la dÉlicatesse que comporte leur origine. Il suffit d’admirer une seconde l’Épais tapis qui sert de lit pour que le serviteur de la noble prostituÉe apporte À son amant d’une minute, dÈs qu’il a regagnÉ sa demeure, l’objet qui l’avait frappÉ.”^[8]

Biskra may be compared with a Nile town such as Luxor, if one can imagine Luxor without the river, without the temples, and, it must be added, without the flies. But it is a desert town, the town of an oasis, born of springs of water rising in a dry place, and it revels in the desert sun and sky. It is most pleasant when the sky is cloudless and the air still. But its beauty is greater when a moderate wind is blowing and light clouds are passing. Then are glorious deep blue shadows thrown on scarred cliffs of the tawny AurÈs range. The tower of the Royal Hotel is a vantage point from which to view Biskra and its landscape. Thence you may note the extent of the oasis, the belts of palm trees in the distance which mark the existence of other oases, and miles to the south the dunes of shifting sand which to the imagination of most of us represent the real Sahara. Especially beautiful is the scene at sunset. The changing lights on the mountains, the ruddy glow all around, the peculiar quality of transparency in the sky when the sun has set, and perhaps Venus appears and hangs like a lamp between earth and heaven,—only in the desert may we behold these last glories of departing day. The shady, bird-haunted garden of this hotel is a very haven of shelter when the desert wind blows strong and raises the light dust of Biskra in the street without. It is surrounded on all sides by the hotel buildings built in the spacious Oriental manner with corridors opening to the garden and pleasant balconies above.

Biskra of the tourists, urbs circumcurrentium, is in a fair way to rechristen itself Hichenstown. The novelist and his not very edifying story pervade the place; they are thrust at you everywhere with damnable iteration. And the worst of it is that however mawkish the book it has undeniable power, and if you are unfortunate enough to have read it you will be unable to avoid recognizing at every turn the scenes in which the much-longing-to-be-loved heroine and her uncouth lover played their parts. You will probably not have been in the town many hours, perhaps not many minutes, before a guide will accost you and produce with much dignity a visiting-card of Mr. Hichens, on which something is written. If you express neither interest nor emotion he will regard you with a mixture of incredulity and pity. What are you here for but to worship at the shrine of the marabout Hichens? Hichens has made—or marred—Biskra, and Biskra is not unmindful. There is little or nothing to guide you to in Biskra, wherefore is it full of guides. They are an ever-present nuisance. The easier course is to engage one, he will at least keep off the others; if you have more grit you may set out to prove yourself unguidable; every guide’s hand will be against you at first, but you will reap your reward. You will have no difficulty in hiring a guide when you really want one, and he will respect you the more. The Arab is no mean judge in such matters. The authorities have endeavoured to mitigate the nuisance by licensing certain men to act as guides; but they have not altogether suppressed the unauthorized, and the licensed merely give themselves additional airs. Silly sentimental visitors have aggravated matters, and have, moreover, turned many of the boys and girls into impudent beggars. Books have actually been written embodying the views on life and religion of these petted striplings; their remarkable inaccuracies in serious matters suggest that the youth of Biskra is not averse from “pulling the legs” of its amiable patrons. It is all rather sad. But the debasing effect of the inconsiderate tourist is not peculiar to Biskra.

The garden of Count Landon is botanically interesting, and a delightful refuge from glare and dust and importunity. It is not in the ordinary sense a garden; it is rather a great plantation or shrubbery divided by winding paths. The excessive neatness of these paths, built of hard mud and carefully sanded, rather spoils the effect of the wilderness to an English eye. There is abundance of running water, and the palm, which likes to have “its toes in the water and its head in the sun,” flourishes exceedingly. With it are many bamboos, peppers, oranges, and various species of ficus,—the usual subtropical assemblage. I observe no tree-ferns; yet the conditions appear very suitable. It is one continuous jumble; there is no attempt at grouping, which would perhaps have produced a more noble and more natural effect. But as you come suddenly here or there to the verge of this thicket, you are startled and delighted by the contrast of mellow shade within, and the shimmering glare without;—a contrast quite after the manner of Biskra, which revels in the juxtaposition of the incongruous. Those who come to the desert in search of peace and quiet may find themselves in the plight of the guests of a Swiss innkeeper who advertised: “My hotel is recommended to those in search of solitude; thousands come here in search of solitude every summer.” But in the garden of M. Landon you may be at rest, and dream dreams and see visions, as I did. I had been reading certain modern French writers who are concerned to prove that the inhabitants of this country, the indigÈnes, are not Arab at all. They don’t deny the Arab conquest, but hold that the claim to have “come in with Okba” is as empty a boast as among us is the assertion, “We came over with the Conqueror.” They are arguing to a case. If the native is not of Semitic origin there is hope for him. He has been more or less Christian before, so he may be Christianized again, or anti-clerical radical socialized, or whatever is necessary to make him an up-to-date Frenchman. But with all their theorizing nothing is effected. The Arab,—or Berber,—goes on in his Arabian,—or Berberic,—way, unmoved by any attraction of French politics and irreligion. How is he to be broken in? A chance remark of an American fellow-traveller opened to me the great discovery. History supplies other instances of idle words changing its course. There is to-day a great civilizing influence at work on cosmopolitan lines such as the world has never seen before. It has already profoundly affected some of the greatest of human interests,—religion, commerce, and clothes. It will ultimately bring about the abolition of war, because no one will have time to fight. It is permeating the most unlikely quarters; if I mistake not my German neighbours this evening at dinner were continually alluding to it; and what Germany thinks to-day, Europe will think to-morrow. The Arab, or Berber, must be brought into the movement. He must play golf. My American friend informed me that golf has changed the habits of the American business man. It appears that since Columbus arrived this individual has never taken any exercise; he has sat in his office glued to his desk from dewy morn till long after sunset. All that is over, and in a moment. At 3 p.m. he now furtively affixes to his office door a notice, “Back in ten minutes,” and is off to the American Sandwich. Saturday is a whole, not a half, holiday; and Sunday has become a day of especial unrest. If in the twinkling of an eye such a slave of ingrained habits may find salvation, need we despair of the poor Arab, or worry ourselves about his pedigree? To all appearance he is usually short of a job; his posture of seemingly permanent repose is explained to me as one of waiting till his dates are ripe. Golf will alter his whole attitude of mind as of body. Local conditions are most favourable. The Sahara contains the finest sand-bunkers in the world. The creation of greens is merely a matter of sinking Artesian wells, a laudable process on which the French Government is already embarked, but with no full appreciation of its real significance. Temporary club-houses of galvanized iron would meet all requirements for the present. At once the Arab’s (I must continue to call him the Arab, in spite of my French authors) distinctive dress would go. No one who has not put it on can realize in what a cuirass, in what folds, he is involved. As he is he could never hope to drive a decent ball. Array him in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers and putties (I observe that his French conquerors are greatly affecting putties) and his aloofness disappears. At a stroke he enters the world-movement; Colonel Bogey will oust the Lord Okba; and when Hadji ben Mohammed ben Yakoub comes over to represent the Biskra and North Sahara Golf Club at St. Andrews may I be there to see him win.

A little way further south than the garden of Count Landon, on the Touggourt road lie the scattered native hamlets known to the French as La Vieille Biskra, the crumbling houses of a ragged population. Here is the very ne plus ultra of Arab untidiness. But the play of sunbeams through the palm trees’ grateful shade turns squalor into beauty. Arab villages are often half in ruins. Their irregular construction of blocks of dried mud gives them the aspect of the homes of animals rather than of men,—the creation perhaps of some gigantic ant. When it rains they not infrequently fall down. And the labour of rebuilding is not lightly undertaken.

Biskra is soon to lose its present distinction as the end of the railway line. The rails are being rapidly laid towards Touggourt, 212 kilometres to the south, a desert town where splendid gardens flourish beneath the shade of 200,000 palm trees. The irrepressible motor-car has already stirred its dust. The prudent Michelin guide describes the road thither as piste carrossable mais imprudente À suivre par mauvais temps. You are advised to take mats to lay down in the softer places for the car to run over. But what happens in the event of a serious breakdown is not explained. When the rail is finished the enterprising tourist may pass by Biskra as a mere wayside station and continue to the end. But he may be only going farther to fare worse. It does not appear that the distant towns of the Sahara present any special points of interest beyond their existence. Yet perhaps there are some to whom the desert calls as to others the veldt. But they will stick to their camels and their mules, and merely use the railway extension as a jumping-board for further explorations.

To him who strives to peer beneath the obvious surface nothing in Biskra is more significant than the statue of Cardinal Lavigerie. It stands in the main street close to the luxurious Royal Hotel, hard by the quarter of the Arab cafÉs and the street of the Ouled-NaÏl dancing-girls, a symbol of the eternal amidst the evanescent, a protest for God against the Devil and the world. And it looks south. Thousands of miles away, across the vast expanse of the continent, another statue looks north. Rhodes and Lavigerie, two types of our civilization, further apart in intention and in ideals of human conduct than are their statues, look forth over Africa from their separate standpoints, the Africa for which each spent his strength. Both worked to bring to the Dark Continent the accumulated wealth of light to which Europe is heir; they drew perhaps on different departments in the great storehouse; they directed the illumination to different points; but to evolve order from chaos, to substitute freedom for tyranny, to impose peace even, if need were, by the sword,—these were the objects which both pursued.

The neighbourhood of Biskra is rich in memories of Sidi Okba, the barber of the Prophet, and the first of the Arab conquerors. It was he who pushed westward from Kairouan through Barbary to the Atlantic, having defeated the Berbers under KoceÏla and other chieftains. Arrived at the shore of the ocean he raised the standard of the Prophet crowned with the crescent, and indicating with it the course of the sun from its rising to its setting, dashed forward and breasted the waves with his horse, crying, “God of Mahomet, were I not stopped by the waves of this sea, I would go to the ends of the earth to carry the glory of thy name, to fight for thy religion and to destroy those who will not believe on thee!” On his return journey he was attacked by a force of Berbers under KoceÏla near Biskra and killed with three hundred of his followers. He was buried in the oasis which bears his name, and his tomb is an object of pilgrimage and veneration.

But the Berbers, if they had killed one leader, did not succeed in maintaining their independence. That they adopted the invaders’ religion is not very surprising. Their previous religions seem to have sat lightly on them: idolaters, pagans, converted in numbers to Judaism, orthodox Christians, Donatists,—they had been all in turn. The dogmatic simplicity of Islam is summed up in the words, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God.” It only demands a belief in this one God and the veneration of Mahomet, last of the prophets, invested by God with the mission to bring back men to the religion of the ancient patriarchs and to the acknowledgment of the Unity of the Godhead. It is completed by belief in three revealed books, the Bible, the Gospel, and the Koran. It denies the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ, who is regarded only as a prophet, but allowed to have possessed a special nature.

The simple formula of Mohammedanism was not very difficult for a man with no prejudices to accept. It meant, of course, more than appeared from its positive assertion; it was directed alike against the Trinitarianism of the Christians and the idolatry or image-worship of pre-Mohammedan Arabians. In its rejection of anthropomorphism it stands on a high intellectual plane; and it is one of the marvels of history that such an abstraction as the God of Mahomet should have been sufficient to rouse the Prophet’s followers to their pitch of conquering enthusiasm. Races beaten in battle no doubt easily accepted its primary proposition. “People follow the religion of their kings,” says an Arab proverb. But there was more behind. The Prophet attached to his religious doctrine a very precise ethical code, a moral system admirable on the whole in its exposition of the duties of man to man; yet in its permission of polygamy regarding women as inferior to men. And on the political side he united the functions of the priest, the judge and the king. It follows that however enlightened the main basis of Mohammedanism it is fundamentally opposed alike to Christianity and to modern theories of democratic government and the equality of the sexes. “Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God has gifted the one above the other,” says the Koran.

After the manner of organized religions all sorts of complicated additions have been made to the originally simple rule of the Prophet, which enjoined prayer, ablutions, fasting, abstinence from wine and the flesh of the pig. These accretions are largely concerned with the veneration of saints and the exorcising of spirits. Among the former not the least is Sidi Okba, canonized rather, we may suppose, for his prowess as a conqueror and his zeal as a propagandist than for any peculiar sanctity of life.

The oasis of Sidi Okba lies about twenty-one kilometres south-east of Biskra. The road crosses a level plain, and is at present in a rather rough condition, but is being re-metalled. The drive is a pleasant one, with the long line of mountains on the left fading away into a blue distance; on the right the desert with an occasional oasis marked by its group of palms. As we approach Sidi OkbaOkba the dark belt visible from Biskra takes shape. The little town lies in the midst of an immense group of date-palms, of all sizes, some of great age; one has the honour of being described as the oldest palm in Africa. Sidi Okba has not been in any way Europeanized, it is still the unadulterated East; its houses built of mud, of one story; its streets narrow, winding and very unclean. It appears to be greatly over-populated, and the mass of its inhabitants to be very poor. The streets are thronged with men, but scarcely a woman is to be seen. The stranger, who will do well on this occasion to bring a guide, will be quite unmolested, and to all appearance totally disregarded. A main street full of little shops, curious and interesting, leads to the market-place, which is the very climax of Arab untidiness. Sidi Okba is not a place for the squeamish.

The chief object of interest is the mosque, which is considered to be the oldest Mohammedan building in Africa. It is a square building surrounded by a portico, with a flat roof supported on twenty-six rudely carved columns. The saint’s tomb is contained in a little chapel which it is unlawful for the unbeliever to enter. The mosque and its porticoes are greatly resorted to by students and pilgrims; it contains little cells in which they are lodged, and endowments have been created by pious benefactors for their support. There are many present to-day: here a single student reading laboriously a passage of the Koran written on a wooden slab; there a little group of doctors squatting in a circle apparently discussing a knotty point, but in reality only capping each other’s quotations from the sacred book. In an adjoining room is the usual Arab school—a number of boys surrounding a seated master who is armed with a long cane, and yelling their lesson (the Koran again) with all their might. It is all very far apart from the workaday western world. Yet even into this very shrine of esoteric Islam has the West edged its way. On the walls of the mosque hang highly-coloured prints of the holy cities of Arabia, Mecca and Medina. My guide pointed them out to me as objects of interest. In the corner of the view of Medina I noticed the words, “All rights reserved. The Cairo Punch.”

On one of the pillars is engraved in early Cufic characters the grandly simple inscription, “This is the tomb of Okba, son of NafÈ. May God have mercy on him.” The wooden door of the mosque is very finely carved in a curious design. It is said to have been brought from Tobna, in the high plateau of the Hodna, and to have been formerly covered with precious metals and jewels, which were sold for the benefit of the mosque; but this may be doubted.

To obtain a view of the township and the oasis you may ascend the minaret. Here your guide will not accompany you. Arabs object to any prying eye surveying their roofs, which are the resort of their women. They have perhaps grown accustomed to the irrepressible European, who will always go to the highest point at all hazards; he is also beneath their contempt, and in any case will depart and be no more seen. With one of their own countrymen it is different; he may be the European’s servant, but he is a fellow-religionist and not a mere animal like his employer. So the European is tolerated with a shrug. For the office of muezzin, the custodian of the mosque, whose business it is to ascend the minaret and call the faithful to prayer, a blind man with a brazen voice is in much request. If not actually, the muezzin is conventionally blind. So he will light a candle to guide you up the dark staircase, and accompany you to the top. The town lies below you and all around,—a curious collection of square mud boxes. On many of the roofs are basket-work erections, which are explained to you as the framework of tents, in which the inhabitants sleep during the great summer heats. Over the heads of countless palm trees your eye ranges to the desert, bounded on the north by the cliffs of Barbary, limitless to the south. And southwards you will gaze till you grow weary of immensity.

Perhaps nowhere more than at Sidi Okba, under the shadow of the great conqueror’s tomb, may you feel the haughty disdain of the Arab. He stalks past you apparently in utter unconsciousness of your presence. You belong to a civilization which for the moment has conquered his in war. Allah has willed it. But you represent with your anthropomorphic religion, your abominable demeanour and social arrangements, especially your own lack of dignity and the licence you allow to your women, all that he holds most accursed. You attach undue importance to human life in this world; and this leads you into a ridiculous state of worry about trumpery matters of sanitation and so forth, which are quite beneath the notice of a man concerned with the higher mysteries of the universe and considerations of eternity. Your grovelling disregard of the really great things gives you leisure to devote yourself to such trifles as trade and transport, and so you grow rich, which is rather to your discredit than the reverse. Wherefore the Arab expresses his contempt for you by the supremest indifference, striving only to preserve the hem of his robe from contact with the unclean.

The ordinary traveller will perhaps leave Biskra with no great regret, however much he may have found of interest in his visit. But to those rare spirits among us who endeavour to repair the mischief caused by our first parents, Biskra presents very special opportunities. There is very little to see, and nothing whatever to do; it is a capital place for sitting in the shade with a brilliant sky above. The Garden of Eden is an Oriental ideal; these Arabs who exist in contemplation of their palm trees are striving to live up to it. It is not at all an English ideal. The primeval curse lies heavy on the Englishman; he has made the best of it and has come to regard work as a virtue. Not only by the sweat of his brow must he earn his living; by the sweat of his brow must he achieve his pleasure. A paradise in which he could not knock a ball about or kill the other animals were no paradise to him. Yet even among our strenuous people there are emancipated individuals, to whose simple needs a sunny climate and regular meals at a comfortable hotel suffice:—

such will find a congenial resting-place.