When one traverses the great plains of the Sersou and the Hauts Plateaux leaning back in a comfortable car, or when trekking across the Sahara to some known water-point among a friendly people, one often wonders how it was possible for that small French column in this unknown country to press on after an elusive enemy with lines of communication of such immense length. There is no heroic record of their achievements, and, apart from certain names known to French school-children, no one appears to have been honored or exalted as responsible for this series of campaigns. Let any trained soldier consider the taking of Laghouat, three hundred miles south of Algiers, in a desert, unpopulated and waterless, and he will wonder how it was done. The conquest of Algeria by the French is one of the greatest pages of military history. CHAPTER V THE INHABITANTS TO-DAY North Africa has been very aptly described as a melting-pot of the Mediterranean races, and, though all trace of invaders such as the Vandals and the Byzantines have vanished, the other peoples who came and conquered and were in turn defeated have left their mark on the inhabitants of to-day. The Phœnician, the Roman, the Arab, the Spaniard, the Turk, can be seen in all parts of North Africa, and, though it requires perhaps a little study and experience to place one’s hand on the actual features of the past conquests, they are most striking when one is shown them. The original race of the country is, however, the Berber, and, in spite of these invasions which have devastated, reinstated, and again devastated his country, he has remained in a good many districts as pure as the Celts. Roughly speaking, it can be said that to-day the pure Berbers are found in all the highest mountains, such as the Aurès above Biskra, the Kabyle country, and that portion of the Tellian Atlas known as the Ouarsenis, strongholds to which they returned during the various invasions, and where they remained unassailable while the tide of war ebbed and flowed beneath them. The people of the Mzab and the Touaregs of the Hoggar are also pure Berbers: in the case of the former because they were determined to remain pure and exiled themselves in the merciless desert, and in the latter because they were too far away to be touched by invasion. In other parts of Algeria intermarriage naturally took place during the various dominations, but, though Roman and Turkish traces remain, these are eclipsed by those of the Arabs.