Algeria, a division of northern Africa, formerly the Turkish
pashalic of Algiers, but since 1830 included in the foreign
dominions of France. It is bounded N. by the Mediterranean, E.
by Tunis, W. by Morocco, S. by the Great Sahara. The extreme
length is 500 miles from E. to W.; the extreme breadth 200 miles
from N. to S. The Atlas ridge constitutes an important physical
feature in the country, and divides the arable land of the
sea-board from the desert. It also constitutes the northern and
southern watershed of the province. The main ridge runs from
east to west, but the whole province is intersected in all directions
with spurs from the central range. The loftiest of the western
mountains is Mount Wanashrees, the Mons Zalacus of Ptolemy; of
the eastern the Jurjura and Aurès. These attain a height of nearly
7,000 feet. The principal river is the Sheliff. There are rivers of
considerable size also, which flow from the south side of the Atlas,
and lose themselves in the desert. None of these rivers are
navigable. They are nearly dried up in the summer, but overflow
a considerable extent of country in the spring and fertilize the
soil.

The climate is not considered unhealthy by some travellers.
Ophthalmia and cutaneous diseases are common. It is said there
are no endemic fevers, but the great loss of the French troops by
disease may perhaps lead to a different conclusion. The atmosphere is pure and bright, the summer very hot; and in the winter

severe weather is occasionally experienced, especially in the hill
country. On the limits of the desert the soil is arid and sandy, but
between the mountain districts it is fertile, and especially so in the

neighborhood of the streams. Grain crops of all kinds, fruits,
European and tropical; flowers, and particularly roses, of remarkable beauty; and a species of sugar-cane, said to be the largest and

most productive of any known species, grow in Algeria. The
domestic animals of every variety are numerous. Horses, of
course, are excellent; asses are of fine growth and much used for
riding. The camel and dromedary of Algeria are very superior.
The merino sheep is indigenous, and Spain was first supplied
from Algeria. The Numidian lion, the panther and leopard,
ostriches, serpents, scorpions, and other venomous reptiles, are
abundant.

The Berbers, Kabyles, or Mazidh, for they are known by the
three names, are believed to have been the aboriginal inhabitants.
Of their history as a race little is known, further than that they
once occupied the whole of north-western Africa, and are to be
found also on the eastern coast. The Kabyles live in the mountain
district. The other inhabitants are Arabs, the descendants of the
Mussulman invaders. Moors, Turks, Kouloughs,* Jews, and negroes, and lastly the French, are found in the country. The

population in 1852 was 2,078,035, of which 134,115 were
Europeans of all nations, beside a military force of 100,000 men.
The Kabyles are an industrious race, living in regular villages,
excellent cultivators, and working in mines, in metals, and in
coarse woollen and cotton factories. They make gunpowder and
soap, gather honey and wax, and supply the towns with poultry,
fruit, and other provisions. The Arabs follow the habits of their
ancestors, leading a nomadic life, and shifting their camps from
place to place according as the necessities of pasturage or other
circumstances compel them. The Moors are probably the least
respectable of the inhabitants. Living in the towns, and more
luxurious than either the Arabs or Kabyles, they are, from the
constant oppression of their Turkish rulers, a timid race, reserving
nevertheless their cruelty and vindictiveness, while in moral
character they stand very low.

The chief towns of Algeria are Algiers the capital, Constantine,
population about 20,000, and Bona, a fortified town on the
sea-coast, population about 10,000 in 1847. Near this are the coral
fisheries, frequented by the fishers from France and _ Italy.
Bougiah is on the gulf of the same name. The capture of this
place was hastened by the outrages of the Kabyles in the

a Kouloughs—the offspring of Turks and Algerian women.— Ed.

neighborhood, who wrecked a French brig by cutting her cable
and then plundered her and massacred the crew.

There are some remains of antiquity in the interior, especially in
the province of Constantine, among others those of the ancient
city of Lambessa; with remains of the city gates, parts of an
amphitheatre, and a mausoleum supported by Corirthian pillars.
On the coast is Coleah [and] Cherchell, the ancient Julia Caesarea,
a place of some importance to the French. It was the residence of
Juba, and in its neighborhood are ancient remains. Oran is a
fortified town. It remained in possession of the Spaniards until
1792. Tlemcen, once the residence of Abd-el-Kader, is situated in
a fertile country; the ancient city was destroyed by fire in 1670,
and the modern town was almost destroyed by the French. It has
manufactures of carpets and blankets. South of the Atlas is the
Zaab, the ancient Gaetulia. The chief place is Biscara; the
Biscareens are a peaceful race, much liked in the northern ports
as servants and porters.

Algeria has been successively conquered by the Roman, the
Vandal, and the Arab. When the Moors were driven from Spain
in 1492, Ferdinand sent an expedition against Algiers, and seizing
on Oran, Bougiah, and Algiers, he threatened the subjugation of
the country. Unable to cope with the powerful invader, Selim
Cutemi, the emir of the Metidjah, a fertile plain in the
neighborhood of Algiers, asked assistance from the Turks, and the
celebrated corsair, Barbarossa Horush, was sent to his assistance.
Horush appeared in 1516, and having first made himself master
of the country and slain Selim Cutemi with his own hand, he
attacked the Spaniards, and after a war of varying fortunes, was
obliged to throw himself into Tlemcen, where a Spanish army
besieged him, and having succeeded in capturing him, put him to
death in 1518. His brother, Khair-ed-Deen, succeeded him, sought
assistance from the sultan, Selim I, and acknowledged that prince
as his sovereign. Selim accordingly appointed him pasha of
Algiers, and sent him a body of troops with which he was able to
repulse the Spaniards, and eventually to make himself master of
the country. His exploits against the Christians in the Mediterranean gained him the dignity of capudan pasha from Solyman I.

Charles V made an attempt to reinstate the Spanish authority,
and a powerful expedition of 370 vessels and 30,000 men crossed
the Mediterranean in 1541. But a terrible storm and earthquake
dispersed the fleet, and cut off all communication between it and
the army. Without shelter, and exposed to the harassing attacks of
a daring enemy, the troops were compelled to reembark, and

make their escape with a loss of 8,000 men, 15 vessels of war, and
140 transports. From this time forward there were unceasing
hostilities between the Barbary powers and the knights of Malta;
thence sprang that system of piracy which made the Algerine
corsairs so terrible in the Mediterranean, and which was so long
submitted to by the Christian powers.”” The English under Blake,
the French under Duquesne, the Dutch, and other powers, at
various times attacked Algiers; and Duquesne having twice
bombarded it, the dey sent for the French consul of Louis XIV,
and having learned from him the cost of the bombardment,
jeeringly told him that he would himself have burnt down the city
for half the money.

The system of privateering was continued in spite of the
constant opposition of the European powers; and even the shores
of Spain and Italy were sometimes invaded by the desperadoes
who carried on this terrible trade of war and plunder. Thousands
of Christian slaves constantly languished in captivity in Algiers;
and societies of pious men were formed, whose express object was
to pass to and from Algiers annually for the purpose of ransoming
the prisoners with the funds remitted to their care by relatives.
Meanwhile, the authority of the Turkish government had been
reduced to a name. The deys were elected by the janizaries,”° and
had declared their independence of the Porte. The last Turkish
pasha had been expelled by Dey Ibrahim in 1705; and the
janizaries by tumultuous elections appointed new chiefs, whom in
their mutinies they often murdered. The janizaries were recruited
from the immigrants from Turkey, no native, though the son of a
janizary by a woman of the country, being admitted into their
ranks. The dey sent occasional presents to Constantinople as a
token of his nominal allegiance; but all regular tribute was
withdrawn, and the Turks, hampered by their constant struggles
with Russia, were too weak to chastise the rebels of a distant
province. It was reserved to the young republic of the United
States to point the way to an abolition of the monstrous tyranny.
During the wars of the French revolution and of Napoleon, the
powerful fleets in the Mediterranean had protected commerce,
and the Algerines had been compelled to a respite of their lawless
exactions. On the renewal of peace, the Algerines commenced
their depredations; and the Americans, who in 1795 had been
compelled to follow the example of European nations, and to
subsidize the dey for peace, now refused the tribute. In 1815,
Commodore Decatur encountered an Algerine squadron, took a
frigate and a brig, and sailed into the bay of Algiers, where he

forced the dey to surrender all American prisoners, and to
abandon all future claims for tribute. This bold example was
followed by the English, who, under Lord Exmouth, bombarded
the city in 1816, and reduced it to ashes, compelling the dey to
surrender his prisoners. This was, however, only a punishment;
for piracy was not suppressed, and in 1826 the Algerines openly
seized Italian vessels in the Mediterranean, and even carried their
incursions into the North sea. In 1818, Hussein dey succeeded to
the government; in 1823, the dwelling of the French consul*
having been plundered, and various outrages having been
committed on vessels under the French flag, reparation was
demanded without success. At last the dey of Algiers personally
insulted the consul of France, and used expressions disrespectful
to the king of France, who had not replied to a letter which the
dey had written, in respect of a debt due by the French
government to Jew merchants who were indebted to Hussein.” To
enforce an apology, a French squadron was sent, which blockaded
Algiers. Negotiations were opened between France, Mehemet Ali,
and the Porte, by which Mehemet ‘Ali, with the assistance of
France, undertook to conquer Algiers, and to pay a regular tribute
to the sultan,” from whom he would hold the government. This was
broken off partly from the opposition of England, and partly
because Mehemet Ali and France could not agree as to the precise
arrangements by which the scheme was to be carried into effect.
The government of Charles X now undertook an expedition
against Algiers single-handed, and on June 13, 1830, an army of
38,000 men, and 4,000 horses, disembarked before Algiers, under
command of Gen. Bourmont. Hussein dey had levied an army of
60,000 to oppose. them, but having allowed them to land, he could
make no effective resistance; and Algiers capitulated July 4, on
condition that persons’ private property and the religion of the
country should be respected, and that the dey and his Turks
should retire. The French took possession of the city. Among the
spoil, they took 12 ships of war, 1,500 bronze cannon, and nearly
$10,000,000 in specie. They immediately garrisoned Algiers, and
established a military regency. The government of Charles X had
intended to surrender Algiers to the sultan, and instructions to
that effect were actually on their way to Constantinople, when the
events of July, 1830, deposed Charles X.” One of the first acts of

b Mahmud II.— Ed.

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his successor’ was to decide on retaining the conquest, and Clausel
was sent over as general-in-chief in place of Bourmont.

From the first occupation of Algeria by the French to the
present time, the..unhappy country has been the arena of
unceasing bloodshed, rapine, and violence. Each town, large and
small, has been conquered in detail at an immense sacrifice of life.
The Arab and Kabyle tribes, to whom independence is precious,
and hatred of foreign domination a principle dearer than life
itself, have been crushed and broken by the terrible razzias in
which dwellings and property are burnt and destroyed, standing
crops cut down, and the miserable wretches who remain massacred, or subjected to all the horrors of lust and brutality. This

barbarous system of warfare has been persisted in by the French
against all the dictates of humanity, civilization, and Christianity. It
is alleged in extenuation, that the Kabyles are ferocious, addicted
to murder, torturing their prisoners, and that with savages lenity is
a mistake. The policy of a civilized government resorting to the lex
talionis? may well be doubted. And judging of the tree by its
fruits, after an expenditure of probably $100,000,000, and a
sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives, all that can be said of
Algeria is that it is a school of war for French generals and
soldiers, in which all the French officers who won laurels in the
Crimean war received their military training and education. As an
attempt at colonization, the numbers of Europeans compared with
the natives show its present almost total failure; and this in one of
the most fertile countries of the world, the ancient granary of
Italy, within 20 hours of France, where security of life and
property alike from military friends and savage enemies alone are
wanted. Whether the failure is attributable to an inherent defect in
the French character, which unfits them for emigration, or to
injudicious local administration, it is not within our province to
discuss. Every important town, Constantine, Bona, Bougiah,
Arzew, Mostaganem, Tlemcen, was carried by storm with all the
accompanying horrors. The natives submitted with an ill grace to
their Turkish rulers, who had at least the merit of being
co-religionists; but they found no advantage in the so-called
civilization of the new government, against which, beside, they had
all the repugnance of religious fanaticism. Each governor came
but to renew the severities of his predecessor; proclamations

a Louis Philippe.— Ed.
b The law of retaliation, based on the Old Testament precept of “an eye for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth”.— Ed.

announced the most gracious intentions, but the army of
occupation, the military movements, the terrible cruelties practised
on both sides, all refuted the professions of peace and good-will.

In 1831, Baron Pichon had been appointed civil intendant, and
he endeavored to organize a system of civil administration which
should move with the military government, but the check which
his measures would have placed on the governor-in-chief offended
Savary, duc de Rovigo, Napoleon’s ancient minister of police, and
on his representation Pichon was recalled. Under Savary, Algeria
was made the exile of all those whose political or social misconduct
had brought them under the lash of the law; and a foreign legion,
the soldiers of which were forbidden to enter the cities, was
introduced into Algeria. In 1833, a petition was presented to the
chamber of deputies, stating,

“for 3 years we have suffered every possible act of injustice. Whenever
complaints are preferred to the authorities, they are only answered by new
atrocities, particularly directed against those by whom the complaints were brought
forward. On that account no one dares to move, for which reason there are no
signatures to this petition. O my lords, we beseech you in the name of humanity, to
relieve us from this crushing tyranny: to ransom us from the bonds of slavery. If
the land is to be under martial law, if there is to be no civil power, we are undone;
there will never be peace for us.” *

This petition led to a commission of inquiry, the consequence of
which was the establishment of a civil administration. After the
death of Savary, under the ad interim rule of Gen. Voirol, some
measures had been commenced calculated to allay the irritation;
the draining of swamps, the improvement of the roads, the
organization of a native militia. This, however, was abandoned on
the return of Marshal Clausel, under whom a first and most
unfortunate expedition against Constantine was undertaken.” His
government was so unsatisfactory, that a petition praying inquiry
into its abuses, signed by 54 leading persons connected with the
province, was forwarded to Paris in 1836. This led eventually to
Clausel’s resignation. The whole of Louis Philippe’s reign was
occupied in attempts at colonization, which only resulted in
land-jobbing operations; in military colonization, which was
useless, as the cultivators were not safe away from the guns of
their own block-houses; in attempts to settle the eastern part of
Algeria, and to drive out Abd-el-Kader from Oran and the west.°?
The fall of that restless and intrepid chieftain so far pacified the

a Presumably quoted from Wigand’s Conversations-Lexikon, Bd. 1, S. 253-54.—
Ed.

country, that the great tribe of the Hamianes Garabas sent in their
submission at once.

On the revolution of 1848, Gen. Cavaignac was appointed to
supersede the Duke d’Aumale in the governorship of the
province, and he and the Prince de Joinville, who was also in
Algeria, then retired. But the republic did not seem more
fortunate than the monarchy in the administration of this
province. Several governors succeeded each other during its brief
existence. Colonists were sent out to till the lands, but they died
off, or quitted in disgust. In 1849, Gen. Pélissier marched against
several tribes, and the villages of the Beni Sillem; their crops and
all accessible property were burnt and destroyed as usual, because
they refused tribute. In Zaab, a fertile district on the edge of the
desert, great excitement having arisen in consequence of the
preaching of a marabout,"’ an expedition was despatched against
them 1,200 strong, which they succeeded in defeating; and it was
found that the revolt was wide-spread, and fomented by secret
associations called the Sidi Abderrahman, whose principal object
was the extirpation of the French. The rebels were not put down
until an expedition under Generals Canrobert and Herbillion had
been sent against them; and the siege of Zoatcha, an Arab town,
proved that the natives had neither lost courage nor contracted
affection for their invaders. The town resisted the efforts of the
besiegers for 51 days, and was taken by storm at last. Little Kabylia
did not give in its surrender till 1851, when Gen. St. Arnaud
subdued it, and thereby established a line of communication
between Philippeville and Constantine.

The French bulletins and French papers abound in statements
of the peace and prosperity of Algeria. These are, however, a
tribute to national vanity. The country is even now as unsettled in
the interior as ever. The French supremacy is perfectly illusory,
except on the coast and near the towns. The tribes still assert their
independence and detestation of the French regime, and the
atrocious system of razzias has not been abandoned; for in the
year 1857 a successful razzia was made by Marshal Randon on the
villages and dwelling-places of the hitherto unsubdued Kabyles, in
order to add their territory to the French dominions. The natives
are still ruled with a rod of iron, and continual outbreaks show the
uncertain tenure of the French occupation, and the hollowness of
peace maintained by such means. Indeed, a trial which took place
at Oran in August, 1857, in which Captain Doineau, the head of
the Bureau Arabe,”’ was proved guilty of murdering a prominent
and wealthy native, revealed a habitual exercise of the most cruel

4*

and despotic power on the part of the French officials, even of
subordinate rank, which justly attracted the attention of the world.

At present, the government is divided into the three provinces
of Constantine on the east, Algiers in the centre, and Oran in the
west. The country is under the control of a governor-general, who
is also commander-in-chief, assisted by a secretary and civil
intendant, and a council composed of the director of the interior,
the naval commandant, the military intendant, and attorneygeneral, whose business is to confirm the acts of the governor.

The conseil des contentieux at Algiers takes cognizance of civil and
criminal offences. The provinces where a civil administration has
been organized have mayors, justices, and commissioners of police.
The native tribes living under the Mohammedan religion still have
their cadis; but between them a system of arbitration has been established, which they are said to prefer, and an officer (l’avocat

des Arabes) is specially charged with the duty of defending Arab
interests before the French tribunals.

Since the French occupation, it is stated that commerce has
considerably increased. The imports are valued at about
$22,000,000, the exports, $3,000,000. The imports are cotton,
woollen, and silk goods, grain and flour, lime, and refined sugar;
the exports are rough coral, skins, wheat, oil, and wool, with other
small matters.