T

HE Mediterranean bears me onward to Barbary and the desert. Strange voices and strange tongues come in at my window as I write. In a well at the end of the deck is a curious pack of human beings, lying, sitting, crowded together. Their faces are strange. Most are small and bear the stamp of the primitive and of "the left-out" upon them. Their clothing is peculiar and varied. Some are in uniform of khaki and blue. They pass sardine tins, grapes, sausages, cheese, great chunks of bread and things I have never seen before. Later on, they lie down to sleep, pulling coats or rugs over them, and are packed as tightly together as the sardines they devour. Not a murmur comes up to our deck from their well; not a song. They are more silent than cattle. Though the moon makes a fairy path upon the sea and the stars are out, they take no heed. They wait placidly for the end now the night has come. Looking down into their dark abode, I now see nothing but dim red points of light from their cigarettes. They are still as the grave. They are the fourth classthe gatherings of the odds and endsthe unconsidered trifles whose silence is more ominous than their voices

the mass from which spring both the hopes and fears of humanity.

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Now, the sirocco is blowing. The Algerian atmosphere is gray with dust and a hard sun shines overhead. Every part of my body groans and aches. I am in purgatory. But yesterday I spent with the Roman saints for whom basilicas have been built to be ruined by pagans, and whose martyrdoms have made amphitheaters famed. Out of the windswept capes by Tipaza they stand, round by the museum-town of Cherchel. The stone coffins of the saints lie neglected above ground, unheeded like casual stones broken away from their rocky surroundings; round the deep basins where the saints were immersed to seal their faith, the sand blows in chasing whiffs; the sacred corner where the great bishops were buried, and the Phenicians before them, has now to be content with the incense of the wild scented flowers among which, to my great joy, I found the wild rosemary.

We had a meal, frugal but hearty, in the open air under the shade of fig-trees at Tipaza. Columns of the old Roman city stood on the flagstones in front of us; huge jars made to hold oil and wine were placed by

the walks of the garden; carved stones rescued from the wreck kept them company; below us splashing against its new wall was the little harbor which has seen the gay and the sober ships of Rome and Phenicia come for the grain and the wine of these parts before the Arab tempest broke like a typhoon upon them and laid them waste.

I have been with the Barbary corsairs this morning. Tiny also is the harbor that sheltered them. Close by is the mosque where they said their prayers and paid homage to Allah. Almost at its front door is the Square where they sold their prisoners. All around is the fishmarket. Within hail is the palace of the deys, those godless scoundrels who knew what a good house was if they knew nothing else! Between the chambers of their wives and their iniquities and the audience hallswhere this day deputations waited, some asking for more houses, others praying for grace: they had been reading Socialist newspapers-I was shown, in a dimly lighted tile-lined closet, the bed upon which King Edward slept! What an incongruous and romantic thing life is, with saints and corsairs, Mohammedan deys and Christian kings, all jumbled up together!

This is the season when the land looks up in pity to heaven, parched right to its heart. It has yielded its fruits; the jetties on the coast are laden with casks bearing away its heart's blood to be mixed with the thinner stuff of the French vineyards, the markets are a mass of gorgeous color from its garnered riches, its exploiters are counting their gains and are planning how to

spend them in the cities as gay as Paris-and the bountiful giver of it all is lying with sunburnt face and cracked dried lips appealing to a high and heedless heaven for a refreshing drop of water. In a week or two the flocks will begin to die; the wandering people know not where to go for pasturage; Mussulman and Christian alike pray for rain.

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In offering us the hospitality of a place on the way, one old headman told us that he had heard much of our virtues and ventured to hope that the clouds might honor us by descending upon us. We joined fervently in his prayer. We explained that it required more than human virtue to end a dispute between earth and heaven. He bowed in agreement. That was the will of Allah. We bowed in response. That was religious, he remarked, and he held such men as us in honor. He then walked us around, and it was a dignity to be with him-his stately carriage, his ample white robe flapping in the wind, his graceful gesture of hand and head. But, alas! we were not fated to be a raingiver, and we left him still praying to Allah on behalf of the thirsty earth.

We had come up over the northern slopes of the Atlas and were crossing the high plateau which separates the sea from the desert proper. For a long time Mediterranean pine, hanging thick with open cones, kept company with us and reminded us of the days when we went to the woods to gather them for "kindlin""; vast vineyards withered on either side of us; great yellow tracts that

looked like desert-but that the cropped stubble told us were fields of grain a few weeks before-ran down into broad hollows among the hills. But they were all in time left behind and we came up to the scrub, to the grass bunches and the mystical coloring of the desert-that elusive blending of blue and pink and yellow and brown that does not seem to belong to substance but to the essence of substance, that is the ardent thought of the sun rather than the property of rock and sand.

And yet, though we had left the rich tribute-paying fields of Imperial Rome about which the romantic poseurs have gushed with the volume (but not the beneficence) of artesian wells-we had not come to the desert proper. Over these uncultivable plains roam nomad tribes with their flocks and herds. The road surface is hard and sharp, and while the punctures are being mended we stretch our legs, have a talk with the shepherds and, avoiding the dogs which bark at us as though they would tear themselves as well as us to pieces, drop into the tents of the nomads, smoke a cigarette with them and discuss the great topic of the day-the drought.

These tents are spacious and airy shelters made of thick stuff of wool and camels' hair, with center poles and an irregular circle of shorter poles about ten or twelve feet from the center. Thus a generous shelter is raised. Behind the curtains are storing rooms and spaces where animals may be gathered. Hens stroll about at will, and the youngsters gaze at you with interest. If you speak French, you can keep

up a conversation with some one of the household who has been in the army. A meal is generally simmering on simmering on the fire of goats' droppings, and the combined smell pervades the tent but is by no means oppressive. With all its differences, the place is wonderfully reminiscent of an old Highland fireside in Scotland. But you peep out over a tawny sunlit land, and you know you are far away from home.

We have had a great feast in one of these tents, outside Laghouat, with the Bach-Agha of the district as our host. He met us with a troop of his tribesmen, mounted on fine smart pacing Arab horses and clothed in flowing white robes. They rushed at us like the wind, yelled, fired their guns, pulled up within a foot or two, rode away, came back like a sword swish. The review over, we were escorted to a green spot at the foot of a rocky hill where there was water. Under the shade of palmtrees, and by the side of a garden, the tent was pitched. The musicians drowned our voices with the harshly piercing notes of pipes and the overpowering booming of drums. The birds did their best to provide a sweeter music, they sang manfully and were not discouraged. Some of them may have fled with us from English damps and colds. The horsemen hovered around among the bushes; Arab cooks and negro attendants scurried hither and thither.

Before the feast began, we surveyed the tent. It was of the same material as all nomad tents are, but the seams of the webs were covered by embroidered white bands, and the floor was covered by carpets of local

make-white, red and dark blue predominating. It was the East in colors. In the middle, raised three or four inches from the ground and covered by a white cloth, was the table laden with utensils and bottles, for though the Bach-Agha was a Mohammedan prohibitionist himself, he was hospitable after the French fashion. Round the table there were long rolls of cushions in gay dyes that talked in Parisian French rather than in the Arabic of the oasis, and upon them we squatted. It reminded me of a scene in the Caucasus in which I once took part, but its barbaric force, save for the pipe music, was almost toned out of it.

The cooking was good-some of it was delicious. The pièce de résistance was the roast sheep brought in with ceremony by a huge negro and placed in the middle of the table in a great tin dish. The Bach-Agha first broke the neck, and with the invocation "Bismillah!" set us the example to fall to, using our fingers to pick the flesh. This ancient ceremony being complied with, a powerful scissors, like a garden implement, was used to cut through the ribs and we continued our meal from pieces placed on our plates—a sad falling off, I am told. When the coffee came, the old man produced a pipe for himself and cigars for us, and we sat enjoying the flavors of life, nursing our heels and our knees.

We talked of men and of Governments and the will of Allah, taking occasion now and again to flatter each other slyly. The shadows moved over the face of the rocks, the harsh pipes seemed to remind us that even here time passes, snatching up the

most delectable of events and bearing them away from us on its bosom. There was a movement among the white-robed horsemen and we began to go. We walked through the garden, bidding each other a long farewell. If Allah brought me hither again, this was to be my abode. The Bach-Agha's heart and home were open to me, and if he himself had gone-well, there was his son, and he would honor his father's invitation. The piper, bestriding his ass's neck so that his feet hung down in front of its forelegs, blew a wild shrieking blast, the drums throbbed madly, we shook hands bending our heads low over them, and in the twinkling of an eye we were lost in the dust of the desert road.

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One evening at Laghouat our Arab hosts brought out their musicians to end our day, and with drum and pipe they made their queer barbaric music that told of wild rides over the desert, of spirits blazing with passion and fury, and of desire to know the Unknowable, ardent with the thirst not of gentle gazelles but of roaring lions. The spirits from hot hills rode in to listen. The old flute-player, skin and bone, blind in one eye, crowned with a dirty burnous, and the younger, the drummer, more prosperous looking, cleaner and more worldly, became transfigured. The perspiration on their faces glistened in the keen steely light of the acetylene lamp. Faster, louder, more strident became their music. They were creating and seeing furious visions. They ended abruptly; the earth seemed to shudder; the light was dimmed; the deep red of the tent hangings looked like

primitive.

Then, on another flute, the old man played a dainty air, the drummer tapped coyly on his stretched parchment, and a woman came up and, bending her ear to the flute, sang in shrill falsetto some song of Europe with a curious blending of those wailing notes and accents that characterize Eastern music. It was a dainty ditty of the genteel suburbs of a city of commerce. But when it ended, no lights dimmed and no spirits murmured. Thus respectaThus respectability (in the name of everything we hold sacred-do not let us call it civilization!) comes to the nomad in his desert. Are we not sweeping the world clean with brooms that are too coarse? Are we not scrubbing so hard that we are removing, with the dirt, the colors that give different races any value?

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We reached, at Ghardaia, the country of that persecuted and heretical sect of Mohammedans, the Mozabites, who are not Arabs but Berbers; a man we have come across who knows them well insists that they are Phenicians. In any event they have a fine history of hardship behind them. During the tenth and eleventh centuries they were chased from one settlement to another until they found asylum in this most forbidding of regions wherein they dug wells and formed oases of about 200,000 palms, which to this day, were human labor withdrawn from them, would return to the desert in a month or two. They hate military service, engage in commerce and have much wealth which they hoard; they do not

their towns no one may smoke); their children do not play in the streets and their women are very strictly veiled. They live in seven cities which, until the French annexed the country, were governed like Geneva under Calvin, by the religious leaders.

The Mozabite is now breathing in luxurious quietude under the French and is troubled by nothing but droughts and compulsory military service. His cities are set upon hills and are crowded with mosques, the minarets of which rise high but heavy after the Sudan style. As I looked on this one at Ghardaia I felt the effort that had failed to express the emotion of worship of the Highest. It is what a child draws on a bit of paper-what an elemental man would offer in awe. In that frame of mind I went along the narrow white-washed streets from the market-place, turning and twisting up the long flights of shallow shelf-like steps, going through tunnel passages, passing cavelike sideways, mounting to the mosque.

They tell me there is another like it somewhere. There may be hundreds, but I have never seen them. It is like an underground buryingplace, a catacomb, and the small recesses cut into the walls as though for urns-as a matter of fact, for shoes-add to that impression. It is full of dark shadowy places, fiercely cut by thin beams of sunlight from small circular holes in the center of some of the domes. Imagine a low oblong space, just high enough in which to stand upright, filled with pillars forming three or four corridors but so placed that each four bears a