Perhaps a friendly critic may venture to be also an adviser. It is to be presumed that Algiers welcomes the advent of strangers. And I find that the local press records with satisfaction that hotels are full, and also that great steamers with hundreds of tourists constantly arrive. These strangers do good to trade, and it may therefore be worth while to pay a little attention to their tastes, and to increase rather than diminish the attractions which draw them hither. Even if the inhabitants of Algiers care little about the beauty of the surroundings of their city, they are part of its essential charm, and should be preserved from the destruction which is everywhere threatening them. The ruthless felling of ancient trees, the obstruction of points of view, the vulgarization of pleasant places,—these may seem little things individually, but in the mass they tell. There are, I believe, full powers to deal with such matters, and the Minister of the Interior has recently addressed to the _préfets_ of France a circular calling attention to the necessity of safeguarding sites of artistic and natural beauty. Let Algiers lead the way, and she will not repent it. But she may some day bitterly repent inaction now. [Illustration: ALGIERS: FOUNTAIN IN THE KASBEH] Another suggestion. It would not be a great matter for the town to purchase a block of buildings in the old streets below the Kasbeh, to clean them out and to preserve them without undue restoration. Strangers wish to see what the old town was like, and are not all able to battle with the squalor and turmoil of the old streets as they are. Such a little natural museum would more than pay for its cost. And—this is a smaller matter still—it would be for the convenience of foreigners if notices were affixed to public buildings, stating at what times they are opened to inspection. It is annoying, for instance, to arrive at the Bibliothèque in the morning and to find it closed, with nothing to indicate when it will be open. I could extend these suggestions. But perhaps it would be too much to expect in a town largely peopled by Mohammedans that strangers visiting the mosques, or even passing in their neighbourhood, should be relieved from the importunities of irresponsible and worrying touts. The town is generally so well policed; the importunity of beggars is so trifling with what one suffers in Egypt, for example; that, like Oliver Twist, one asks for more.