By starting early one will be able to lunch at Djidjelli, and the afternoon run along the _corniche_ to Bougie can then be taken leisurely. The first impression on starting is that of hills. Up to the present all traveling has been done across rolling plains, but serious gradients have been unknown. The descent from the crag on which Constantine is perched again makes one wonder how it was captured by force. The cereal lands continue to give to the country a very desertic appearance, and, though it is not the desert of stones and rock, the rolling fields, with lonely farms, do not attract one to stay. One gets good examples of the desertion of villages by the French colonists, always yearning to get to the big towns near the coast. Mila, at the fifty-fourth kilometer, was once a Roman city of importance; it is the last village of any size we shall pass. Thence onward the country is very wild. At Zeraïa (junction of the road from Djemila mentioned in the last chapter) we traverse forbidding gorges, after which the road runs for a few kilometers across a small plain of olive-yards, crosses a river, and then starts the long climb to the Col de Fdoules. The road is a masterpiece of engineering as it climbs dizzily along the steep cliff of the mountain. At the hundred and fourth kilometer the Col, three thousand feet above the sea, is reached; from the watershed there is one of the finest mountain views in North Africa. To the north and to the south the hills rise up sheer and the valleys are lost in deep shade. The road then runs down into the Gorges of Taberkroutz and for the first time after the long travel, trees appear quite close. The road climbs up again and the woods approach, until soon we are in a thick forest. At the Col de Texenna a splendid panorama of forests and mountains is spread out before one. It is a wonderful sensation to return to luxuriant vegetation after the perpetual desert, and the sound of water with the smell of the damp earth revives the mind, weary with staring over limitless expanses. Another sensation of delight seizes one as the sea comes in view and, rapidly approaching the shore, the road follows it to Djidjelli.