Having now followed in the paths of the tourist and the official tours of the Compagnie Transatlantique, it will perhaps be interesting to cast a glance at the less-frequented routes. There is no doubt that once one leaves the beaten track in Algeria one travels in comparative discomfort, and that the accommodation is, to say the least of it, primitive. Neither is it necessary to go far from the main center to find these discomforts. On the other hand, unless one has these experiences one does not get to know the real people of the country whether they be Arabs or Frenchmen. The true Algerian colonist is there in all his roughness, talking vaguely about France as a paradise, which he may never have seen, in spite of the little distance which separates Europe from North Africa; treating the natives with a curious mixture of comradeship and harshness, little interested in affairs not affecting his actual district, and as unlike an Englishman in the same situation as it is possible to imagine. The common Arab, poor, ill-fed, lazy, working just as long as it is necessary, dishonest when it is worth while, and quite unscrupulous in matters of life and death, exists there with little ambition, while the Arab chiefs whom one has perhaps met in magnificent clothes at some official function live in these lost districts without any ostentation. The only method of communication between the villages, and they are usually some sixty or eighty miles apart, is by road. Some of the richer cultivators and _caïds_ have motor-cars; the well-to-do Arab rides, but it is usual to travel by the motor _diligence_ which carries the mails. The _diligence_ usually starts early in the morning, as, though it travels a good twenty miles an hour, there is always the danger of a breakdown with no question of outside help, and as they are under government contract it is essential that they should have plenty of time to spare. The bus is almost full at the start, but it expands its accommodation in a most astonishing way as it picks up travelers who sit by the roadside, and when it arrives at its destination the roof and the running-boards are crowded with Arabs. People who have correspondence for the post also wait at appointed places with their letters, which are collected by the driver and taken along. And in the same way the mail for the districts where there are no roads is picked up by the postman as the _diligence_ dashes by. Occasionally in years of famine there are holdups, and though the driver is always armed, it is of little avail. The road is barred at some convenient spot where there is cover, the _diligence_ stops, and before any one realizes what has occurred the track is seething with Arabs armed with blunder-busses and bludgeons, who take all there is, puncture the tires and disappear as mysteriously as they came.