From Sétif, most hideous of modern French towns, the road leads northward for some distance through an uninteresting corn-growing country. After a few miles the surface becomes more broken, Khabyle villages begin to appear on neighbouring hill-tops, and Khabyle gardens are rich in apricot blossom. We cross a chain of hills running east and west, from the summit of which we obtain a splendid view of the mountain range which we are about to penetrate. We descend rapidly to the stream which is to be our companion, and at a distance of fifty-three kilometres from Sétif reach Kherrata, at the mouth of the pass. Here is the half-way house where the carriage-folk of former days were wont to pass the night. It lies in a cool upland valley at the foot of bare stony hills which might be in Wales or Cumberland. It is market-day in the village, and the street is crowded with Khabyles,—as ragged and dirty a crowd as you may see in county Galway. Their Arab dress looks curiously incongruous with such very northern surroundings. Immediately beyond Kherrata the road enters the gorge with a dramatic suddenness. It descends rapidly by the side of the stream which here becomes a torrent. The valley contracts and soon grows so narrow that the road has to be bored, as it were, through overhanging cliffs, or borne on arches above the river. There are many kinds of gorges; the least interesting perhaps are those which run directly between unbroken cliffs. This is of the finest kind. Its turns are rapid. It has numerous lateral valleys which break its almost perpendicular sides into seeming pinnacles of rock. One looks almost directly upwards to peaks five and six thousand feet high. Even where the road is carried several hundred feet above the river you may toss a stone and strike the opposite cliff. It is said that before the French road-makers came not even an Arab could pass the gorge on foot. Great caves appear on the mountain sides, the haunt of innumerable pigeons; monkeys are generally to be seen, but on market-days the exceptional traffic scares them to seclusion. Here and there waterfalls descend from the tributary gorges, and rapidly swell the turbid stream. Even the all-pervading Roman seems to have found this gorge too much for him. Yet it is not easy to discover an _endroit_ which has not echoed to the tramp of the legions. Mr. Belloc[12] tells a delightful story of a French general who, filled with pride at having conducted his troops through an almost impossible defile, sent a party to inscribe a record of the achievement on the face of a cliff. The men came back to say that there appeared to be lettering on the cliff already. On examination this proved to be “Legio III Augusta.” Footnote 12: “Esto Perpetus.” London, 1906.