Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873

Various

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• Publié par: shyon
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 32
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 Author: Various Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23095] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE *** Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OFPOPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. MAY, 1873. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by J. B. Lippencott & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.Contents THE ROUMI IN KABYLIA. OUR HOME IN THE TYROL WILMINGTON AND ITS INDUSTRIES. MARIE FAMETTE AND HER LOVERS. SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. A PRINCESS OF THULE. AT ODDS. PHILADELPHIA ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. BERRYTOWN. OVERDUE. QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MILLIONAIRE. CRICKET IN AMERICA OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP. LITERATURE OF THE DAY.THE ROUMI IN KABYLIA. THIRD PAPER. THE AMIN OF KALAA. THE AMIN OF KALAA. Emerging from these gloomy caflons, and passing the Beni-Mansour, the village of Thasaerth (where razors and guns are made), Arzou (full of blacksmiths), and some other towns, we enter the Beni-Aidel, where numerous white villages, wreathed with ash trees, lie crouched like nests of eggs on the summits of the primary mountains, with the magnificent peaks of Atlas cut in sapphire upon the sky above them. At the back part of an amphitheatre of rocky summits, Hamet, the guide, points out a little city perched on a precipice, which is certainly the most remarkable site, outside of opera- scenery, that we have ever seen. It is Kalaa, a town of three thousand inhabitants, divided into four quarters, which contrive, in that confined situation, to be perpetually disputing with each other, although a battle would disperse the whole of the tax-payers over the edges. Although apparently inaccessible but by balloon, Kalaa may be approached in passing by Bogni. It is hard to give an idea of the difficulties in climbing up from Bogni to the city, where the hardiest traveler feels vertigo in picking his way over a path often but a yard wide, with perpendiculars on either hand. Finally, after many strange feelings in your head and along your spinal marrow, you thank Heaven that you are safe in Kalaa. KALAA. KALAA. The inhabitants of Kalaa pass for rich, the women promenade without veils and covered with jewels, and the city is clean, which is rare in Kabylia. There are four amins (or sheikhs) in Kalaa, to one of whom we bear a letter of introduction. The anaya never fails, and we are received with cordiality, mixed with stateliness, by an imposing old man in a white bornouse. "Enta amin?" asks the Roumi. He answers by a sign of the head, and reads our missive with care. Immediately we are made at home, but conversation languishes. He knows nothing but the pure Kabyle tongue, and cannot speak the mixed language of the coasts, called Sabir, which is the pigeon-French of Algiers and Philippeville. COURTYARD IN KALAA. COURTYARD IN KALAA. "Enta sabir el arbi?"—"Knowest thou Arabic?" asks our host. "Makach"—"No," we reply. "Enta sabir el Ingles?"—"Canst thou speak English?" "Makach"—"Nay," answers the beautiful old sage, after which conversation naturally languishes. OURIDA, THE LITTLE ROSE. OURIDA, THE LITTLE ROSE. But the next morning, after the richest and most assiduous entertainment, we see the little daughter of the amin playing in the court, attended by a negress. The child-language is much the same in all nations, and in five minutes, in this land of the Barbarians, on this terrible rock, we are pleasing the infant with wiles learnt to please little English-speaking rogues across the Atlantic. The amin's daughter, a child of six years, forms with her slave a perfect contrast. She is rosy and white, her mouth is laughing, her peeping eyes are laughing too. What strikes us particularly is the European air that she has, with her square chin, broad forehead, robust neck and sturdy body. A glance at her father by daylight reveals the same familiar type. Take away his Arab vestments, and he would almost pass for a brother of Heinrich Heine. His child might play among the towers of the Rhine or on the banks of the Moselle, and not seem to be outside her native country. We have here, in a strong presentment, the types which seem to connect some particular tribes of the Kabyles with the Vandal invaders, who, becoming too much enervated in a tropical climate to preserve their warlike fame or to care for retiring, amalgamated with the natives. The inhabitants on the slopes of the Djordjora, reasonably supposed to have descended from the warriors of Genseric, build houses which amaze the traveler by their utter unlikeness to Moorish edifices and their resemblance to European structures. They make bornouses which sell all over Algeria, Morocco, Tunis and Tripoli, and have factories like those of the Pisans in the Middle Ages. KABYLE SHOWING GERMANIC ORIGIN. KABYLE SHOWING GERMANIC ORIGIN. Contrast the square and stolid Kabyle head shown in the engraving on this page with the type of the Algerian Arab on page 494. The more we study them, or even rigidly compare our Arab with the amin of Kalaa, the more distinction we shall see between the Bedouin and either of his Kabyle compatriots. The amin, although rigged out as a perfect Arab, reveals the square jaw, the firm and large-cut mouth, the breadth about the temples, of the Germanic tribes: it is a head of much distinction, but it shows a large remnant of the purely animal force which entered into the strength of the Vandals and distinguished the Germans of Cæsar's day. As for the Kabyle of more vulgar position, take away his haik and his bornouse, trim the points of his beard, and we have a perfect German head. Beside these we set a representative Arab head, sketched in the streets of Algiers. See the feline characteristics, the pointed, drooping moustache and chin-tuft, the extreme retrocession of the nostrils, the thin, weak and cruel mouth, the retreating forehead, the filmed eye, the ennui, the terrestrial detachment, of the Arab. He is a dandy, a creature of alternate flash and dejection, a wearer of ornaments, a man proud of his striped hood and ornamental agraffes. The Kabyle, of sturdier stuff, hands his ragged garment to his son like a tattered flag, bidding him cherish and be proud of the rents made by Roumi bayonets.TYPE OF ALGERIAN ARAB. TYPE OF ALGERIAN ARAB. It must be admitted that the Kabyles, with a thousand faults, are far from the fatalism, the abuse of force and that merging of individualism which are found with the Islamite wherever he appears. Whence, then, have come these more