was unsafe to go any further, when he immediately and very wisely acted according to their advice. Be the dangers, however, what they might, Prince Pückler-Muskau set out on this long-projected journey, and on a Friday (an unpropitious day, he confesses, for such an undertaking): he was received by the câïd of Beni-Mussa, and an escort of Arabs, who gained his good opinion by their respect for champagne and the flesh, or at least the heads, of wild swine; the former of which seems to have had a very perceptible, and, we have no doubt, good effect upon the heads of the whole troop, for Semilasso tells us that they rode about on the beach like so many madmen :—

"At length they ceased to misuse the willingness of their spirited animals, and soon the cavalcade arranged itself in orderly march on the bad pavement of the old Roman road. They passed between hedges of Indian fig-trees, so lofty that they yielded the travellers a complete shade, a great blessing in the now overpowering heat. After a few hours they reached the last French blockhouse and the Aratsch, which they passed at a tolerably deep ford. Here they halted a few minutes, to water their horses, and to wait for some of the party who had loitered behind. At this place a party of Arabs passed the river from the other side, chiefly mounted on small but heavily-laden asses; and altogether, with these different groupes, the scene might have afforded a singular picture ; particularly when the last Bedouin's poor animal dropped under its burden in the deepest part of the stream, and, with a true ass's patience, once stretching its head out of the water like a carp, gasped for air, and then sank quietly, and perished without a cry. At last, after much labour and time, the Arabs succeeded in drawing the goods out of the water, which, with the now motionless ass, floated on the stream.

"From the Aratsch the plain began gradually but continually to rise towards the mountains, and presented everywhere a dry soil, sometimes mixed with a little sand, but chiefly consisting of a fertile loam, or a black mould, entirely covered either with green grass or with low underwood. Towards evening the caravan reached in safety BeniMussa, at two hours' distance from the Atlas, where the câïd had his hautch, a kind of court surrounded with very wretched buildings of stone, which was probably first built as a secure place for the reception of plunder. An ill-conditioned orange-garden, surrounded by an impenetrable hedge of aloes, concealed one side of the building, and, not far separated from it, extended on the other a pretty little wood of wild olive trees, carobs, and high underwood, in which lay the village, which could only be distinguished by the smoke that rose from it. This foreground, with the deep blue mountains behind, formed a very wild but interesting landscape."-Semilasso, vol. ii. p. 93.

At this place our traveller passed the night, dining upon couscoussou and pilau, and taking his coffee and his three pipes after the true Arab fashion. The câïd had the preceding day made all preparations for the continuance of their excursion, and early

in the morning they set out for the Metidja,* with an escort of fifteen or sixteen horsemen, all well armed :

“Favoured with the serenest weather, the nearer they approached the foot of the Atlas, the richer was the vegetation; and the green declivities of the mountains, covered with well-wooded villages, meadows, fields, and lovely groves, presented an aspect differing little from that of European cultivation. And yet here dwell the wild and so much dreaded Kabyles and Hajutes, of whom, as the câïd informed us, the majestic mountain of Bona-ralissa, which rose right before the eyes of the travellers, alone furnished 2000 combatants. At the mountain-stream, Oueld Dschemma, the caravan was met by a very neatly-dressed, handsome man, mounted on an excellent steed, and accompanied by two servants, who held a private conference of some duration with the câïd, and, as they afterwards learnt, was a thaleb (theologian), who by his authority hindered the adjacent tribes of the mountains from taking any notice of the Christians. He joined the caravan, and only quitted it with the train of the câïd.

“After they had, with manifold varying views of the mountain before them, ridden a few hours further, and very often through thickets where an attack would have been highly perilous, they reached the place where the river, which they had already once passed at a lower point, rushed out of a deep and romantic mountain-glen, and had covered its bed, which was more than a thousand paces wide, but was at this season in great part dried up, with pebbles and masses of rock. On its banks they found many burning charcoal-kilns, which seemed here to be managed just as in the woods of Germany; but they could never see any of the natives about them.

"Not far from this place they came to a very beautiful spot, called Sukel-Arba, to which, as well as to all the district over which they had travelled this day, no European had penetrated since the taking of Algiers; for no military expedition had been directed on this side. For this reason is the place more frequented by the Arabs as a market, as might be seen by the great number of elegant and substantial huts constructed of branches of trees, which remain always standing, though their owners only use them on Wednesdays. Situated immediately at the foot of a lofty mountain, with the view into a deep glen, watered by a clear silvery stream, closed towards the plain by thick hedges of aloes and thickets of flowering shrubs, and shaded by a venerable olive-grove, in which there is not a tree whose appearance would give it an age of less than 200 or 300 years, this place forms one of the most original and most striking market-places that could possibly be conceived. At the end of the afore-mentioned hedge, under some palms, stands the stone monument of a marabout, which sanctifies the surrounding plain. Near it runs the great road over Hamsa towards the desert of

* We take this occasion of observing that, as our two authors disagree much in their mode of spelling the Arabic names, and as there seems to be no regularly-established rule, we give them in our extracts as they are spelt in the books from which each is taken.

powers

Saharah, which, following the bed of the river, lost itself so temptingly in the dark rocky glen, that Semilasso called up all his of persuasion to induce the câïd and the thaleb to follow this path at least another hour. After we had proceeded scarcely a few minutes on the way, both, already in an ill-humour, declared that there was no going further unless at the head of 2000 men; they dared not expose the company to this danger; and moreover, added Kasnadschi, there would not be time sufficient, for he must hand over his charge before night to the câïd of Kraschna, for so the Aga had prescribed to him; but there still remained a couple of hours, after breakfast, to lead the strangers deeper than they had yet been into the Atlas, and indeed as far as it were possible, but more than this they must not require from him."-Semilasso, vol. ii. p. 105-108.

As it would have been imprudent to do otherwise, our traveller yielded to the representations of his guides, and they hastened towards the edge of the mountain, the Arabs amusing themselves on the way by running races over the uneven ground. A short journey, through the most charming scenery, brought them to Hadrah, a farm belonging to the câïd, where they were invited to a parting meal, which consisted of dishes of milk and couscoussou and a kind of thin dried cakes, and was laid out on a carpet spread on the green turf under flowering olive-trees. Here our Prince gives us a dissertation on the word marabout, which seems to us very little to the purpose, and, oddly enough, he succeeds in discovering a "certain analogy" between a Berber marabout and an English gentleman! After their repast was ended, they again mounted their steeds, and proceeded on their road up the Atlas, till they came to a narrow crest, which they reached by natural steps in the rock. Here the scenery was very desolate, with scarcely any vegetation; but the prospect was magnificent, with the vast plains of the Metidja below, traversed in a thousand windings by the Aratsch, the Hamyse, and many other mountain streams, with oases of thickets here and there on their banks; and bounded in the distance by lofty mountains. On descending into the valley, the travellers were received by the câïd of Kraschna, who met them with an escort, and conducted them to his own residence, where they passed the second night. From this place they beheld in the distance a lofty and interesting mountain, and an unconquerable desire was kindled in the mind of our traveller to visit it; but the câïd of Kraschna threatened him with the same difficulties as had been conjured up the preceding day in similar circumstances by the caïd of Beni-Mussa. The Prince, however, was fertile in resources, and he made his guide acquainted with some curious points of his own genealogy; he said that he came from a land where the Arabs had once ruled, that he was himself descended from Arabian blood, that he was

come all this way to visit his Bedouin brethren and their country, and that he must ascend to the summit of the mountain of Hammal, there to offer up his prayers to Allah for a blessing upon his friends. The Arabs, Semilasso thinks, believed this truely "cockand-bull" story, and they proceeded next day to visit the object of his desires. Had we space, we would willingly accompany him thither, for if there is any thing in which Pückler-Muskau has merit it is in describing natural scenery, and his narrative becomes here extremely interesting. He afterwards visited the coast of the Metidja and Cape Matifou, and then returned to Algiers.

The population of the regency of Algiers, of whose manners Captain Rozet has furnished us with many interesting anecdotes, may be divided into seven distinct races. The Berbers appear to be the remains of the aboriginal inhabitants of Barbary, but are now chiefly confined to the mountains; the Moors form the principal part of the population of the towns and cultivated districts; the Arabs inhabit the country, and are in a great measure nomadic tribes; the Turks, though not numerous, were by right of conquest, the ruling race; the Negro population had been formed by the importation of slaves from the interior of Africa; of the origin of the Jews we have already had occasion to speak; the Koulouglis are the children of Moorish ladies married to Turks, and, according to the description which is given of them, seem to be distinguished as the dandies of Algiers. Of all these different classes, the most interesting to us, as having been hitherto the least known, are the Berbers of the mountains. They are described as a handsome, brave, and extremely skilful race of men, possessing none of the disgusting vices of the Moors and Turks, but exceedingly faithless, and, like all savages, cruel and vindictive. Unaccustomed to any kind of government, their mode of life appears to be very primitive.

"The habitations of the Berbers are huts composed of a few bits of wood fixed in the ground, to which they fasten reeds or small branches of trees, and the whole is plastered over with clay mixed with straw. I have seen some of their huts built with stones, uncut, but arranged with much art. These huts are all rectangular, with two gables, and covered by a flattened triangular roof, made of stubble or reeds. They are rarely more than ten feet high; the entrance is by a low and narrow door, tolerably well closed; the windows are small holes made in the front, and in a very few instances are furnished with a piece of glass.

"These huts are scarcely ever collected together in villages; they are found in little groupes in the valleys and on the declivities of the mountains. On the road to Medeya we saw some of these groupes inhabited by several families. We observed the same thing in the mountains of Sumata and Beni-Menad; but in the tribe of Beni-Sala, which we sacked, the huts were joined four or five together, forming a rectangle

with a court in the middle; that through which was the entrance to the court containing the stables, which were separated by the passage; the others containing the lodgings of the family, and the places for preserving their crops. In the vicinity of the huts, which is kept tolerably clean, are found the matmoures, or great conical pits in the ground, in which they preserve grain, pulse, and fruit. At Beni-Sala we found these pits in the interior of the rooms, closed by large stones covered with earth.* The soldiers descended into several, which were filled with dried fruit, and with great earthen pots containing honey, oil, melted butter, dried pulse, and couscoussou. In nearly all the chambers we found great jars, made of clay dried in the sun, two metres high, and half a metre in diameter, and not above three or four millimetres thick. These jars were full of grain, which could be taken out by a large opening in the lower part; they were supported against the wall, or against great wooden posts, and fixed by two iron braces, placed one in the middle and the other at the upper part, terminated by a collar, in the same manner as the jar. We saw also, in the inside of the chambers, bowls full of milk, pots of butter and honey, barley in the corners, and piles of small potatoes. The bee-hives, placed among the bushes around the houses were made of the bark of the cork-tree or platted reeds. The whole furniture of a Berber house consists of two stones for grinding the grain, a few baskets rudely made of reeds, earthen pots, in a most filthy condition, rush mats and sheep-skins, spread on the ground, which serve for beds. Sometimes there are at the two extremities of the chamber platforms of masonry or wood, elevated about two feet above the ground, on which they place their sheep-skins and rush mats, which serve them for mattresses. I never saw anything like beds; the Berbers manage to sleep without them. Those who come to market at Algiers sleep on the pavement, in the middle of the street, or on the terraces of the houses in the suburb of Bab-Azoun: the only precaution they take is to wrap themselves, head and all, in the blanket which serves for their clothing. In a hut at Beni-Sala we found a looking-glass in a frame of gilt wood, a small enamelled vase, and several boxes painted with different colours: it was probably the residence of one of the chiefs of the tribe. All the houses we visited were furnished in the same manner. I was much surprised to find in each a manuscript Koran, written in letters of several colours. In their flight, the inhabitants had, perhaps, left this sacred book by design, to preserve the house from the fury of the soldiery. These houses are very small; women, children, and the stores of provisions, are heaped together in the same room, and the result is a most disagreeable smell, which is every where

*We may very well imagine the dwellings of the less civilized Ancient Britons, which must have been merely temporary structures, to have resembled those of the Berbers of Africa. In different parts of England pits are often found nearly resembling those described in the text, though perhaps somewhat larger, which have been by many people supposed to have answered the same purpose, namely, that of store-rooms. We understand that Sir William Betham has lately attempted to show, by the old names of places, that the Celtic inhabitants of our isles were (if we have been well-informed) the same as those who first inhabited the northern coasts of Africa.

A coarse kind of vermicelli, made of wheat flour.