Further, if one remains a year in the country one will realize the difficulties with which the settler is faced owing to the extremes of climate. Generally speaking, it rains too much north of the Sersou during the months of November, December, and January. It never rains too much in the south. The summer and spring are too dry, and, whereas in the winter there is frost as far south as the edge of the Sahara, the summer heat is everywhere excessive. The heat is especially unpleasant in Algiers and along the coast on account of the damp; at midday in the plains it is intolerable, and when the sirocco blows from the desert, life is wretched all over the smitten area. Irrigation is in its childhood; artificial pasturage is unknown, with the result that a good or a bad year depends entirely on the caprices of the weather. Generally speaking, one can say that in a period of seven years there are two very good years, four average years, and one bad year. When the year is good it is beyond all imagination, and it is, in fact, said that the two very good years should pay for any losses in the remaining five! A land of light and shade, of everlasting contrasts, a land which, like a lovely woman, charms one by its unexpectedness, by its tenderness and sudden harshness, by all its capricious moods. A land of the future, but a land also of the past—and this, perforce, brings us to the next chapter. CHAPTER III A LITTLE HISTORY The original inhabitants of Algeria were Berbers. The present native inhabitant of Algeria is the Berber, and yet ask any one who the natives are and they will reply “Arabs”; some of the more intelligent will perhaps say “Arabs with a sprinkling of Berbers.” But this is wrong. When history first threw light on North Africa the Berbers were there, and they have not yet departed. It is true that many invasions and upheavals have passed through Algeria during the past three thousand years, but, though they have left their trace, it is only the Arabs who have really left their mark on the original inhabitants. The first important landmark in the history of North Africa is the foundation of Carthage about the year 840 B. C. The Phœnicians had already settled on the Tunisian coast for some three hundred years previous to this, but their importance dates from the foundation of their great city, which was to have such an influence on the history of the civilized world for six hundred years.