Oran’s fine old Spanish fort and the ancient walls still speak of the Spanish dominion. It was a penal station to which convicts were sent, and the governors were in the habit of putting their labour to some useful purpose. An inscription records that the citadel was built at no cost to his Catholic Majesty but for the timber and scaffolding. After repeated struggles the town was surrendered to the Turks in 1791, a very convenient arrangement, as things turned out, for the French, who occupied it forty years later. And they have made it what it is. Yet among the lower orders the Spanish element is perhaps still preponderant. To paraphrase the words of a French writer[6]—"the peasants of Valencia and Murcia have only a few hours of sea to cross, and a bad season at home brings them in hundreds. If they find no work in and around Oran as gardeners they betake themselves to the country, and become field-labourers, or harvesters of esparto grass. Sober and industrious, they are especially fitted to the conditions of cultivation in Algeria, which without irrigation is unproductive. They have in their veins the blood of those Moors who taught Spain to husband her waters. Oran is for them almost their own country, the two sides of the Mediterranean have identical characteristics; and in the smallest villages of the province they find themselves at home among their own people." Footnote 6: P. Bourde. It is interesting to recall in this connection that the increase of emigration from Spain generally is becoming a very serious matter. It reaches the annual average of 200,000 persons, or considerably more than one per cent of the total population. The late Government in 1907 dealt with the matter, and appointed a Conseil Supérieur de l’Emigration, which took the exceedingly futile course of endeavouring to check it by police interference with persons arriving at a port to emigrate, the arrest of emigration agents, and complicated regulations affecting steamship companies, which it has been found impossible to carry out. The chief effect has been to conceal a certain amount of emigration, which doubtless exceeds the official figures. The present radical Government, pledged to reform in every department of the national life, is attempting to check unemployment and emigration by a scheme of extensive public works. Meantime under French institutions, Spaniards are living contentedly and prosperously in a country marked out by nature for their occupation, which they were never able to secure for themselves. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _VII—THE CITY OF PRECIPICES_ Road and rail to the eastward—Constantine—Its remarkable site—Its chequered history—French Conquest—Roman remains—Fronto—The Mairie— The road northward—The Aurès. ------------------------------------------------------------------------