ESTO PERPETUA [Illustration] ESTO PERPETUA ALGERIAN STUDIES AND IMPRESSIONS BY H. BELLOC AUTHOR OF “THE PATH TO ROME” LONDON: DUCKWORTH AND CO. 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN MCMVI ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO E. S. P. HAYNES INTRODUCTION Once, in a village that overlooked the Mediterranean, I saw a man working in an open shop, fitting together a builder’s Ornament which was to go upon the ridge-end of some roof or other. He was making the base of the Ornament so as to fit on to a certain angle of the rafters, and the Ornament itself was a Cross. It was spring time, and he was singing. [Illustration] I asked him for whom he was making it. He answered, for a man who had ordered it of him over-sea in Algiers. But another Ornament also stood by, carved in the same way, and similar in size. I asked him for whom he had finished that other, and he said, “For the same man over-sea: he puts them upon buildings.” This second Ornament, however, happened to be a Crescent. [Illustration] The contrast moved me to cross the sea, to understand the land upon the further shore, and to write upon Africa some such little historical essay as follows. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] When a man first sees Africa, if it is just before the rising of the sun, he perceives, right up against a clean horizon, what appear to be islands standing out distinct and sharp above the sea. [Sidenote: The Landfall] At this hour a wind is often blowing from the eastward, and awakens the Mediterranean as though it came purposely at dawn to make the world ready for the morning. The little waves leap up beneath it, steep towards their shadows, and the bows of the ship that had surged all night through a rolling calm begin, as sailors say, to “speak”: the broken water claps and babbles along the side. In this way, if he has good fortune, the traveller comes upon a new land. It is that land, shut off from all the rest between the desert and the sea, which the Arabs call the Island of the West, the Maghreb, but to which we in Europe for many hundred years have given the name of Barbary: as it says in the song about freedom: “... as large as a Lion reclined By the rivers of Barbary.” It is the shore that runs, all built upon a single plan, from Tunis and the Gulf of Carthage to Tangier; that was snatched from Europe in one great cavalry charge twelve hundred years ago, and is now at last again in the grasp of Europe. [Sidenote: The Roads]