Three hours of steady climbing from Tizi-Ouzou brought us to Fort National, a French stronghold, grim and formidable, erected after the revolt of ’71 as “a sword in the heart of Kabylia.” Perched on a mountain-top, from which it dominates a vast area of mountain and valley, it serves as a silent reminder to the warlike Kabyles of the power of France. Barring a quaint walled village, entered through a medieval gateway, there is little of interest there, however, and, pausing only long enough to view the superb panorama commanded by the ramparts of the citadel, we continued onward and upward to Michelet—an Alpine hamlet set down in Africa. Here the Transatlantique people have built a delightful little hotel—just the sort of place you dream of after a long, cold drive but seldom find—with great open fires and capacious leathern chairs and cozy, well-heated, chintz-hung bedrooms. Though it was late in April when we were there, the ground was white from a light fall of snow, and the chill mountain air pierced to the bone, but such minor discomforts were instantly forgotten at sight of logs crackling on an open hearth and, standing, on a table, a brown pinch-bottle whose label bore a once-familiar name. When we awoke in the morning the mountains were covered by so dense a mist that it was impossible to discern an object a hundred feet away, but before we had finished our _café au lait_ the mist had lifted like the curtain of a theater to reveal a scene which fairly took the breath away. The terrace on which we stood fell sharply away in a series of steep, sometimes precipitous, hill-slopes, and, dotted with red-roofed Kabyle villages, broken here and there by groves of olive, fig, and pine, to a long and narrow valley, lush with grass, through which meandered a lovely bright-blue stream. Beyond the little river the slopes again rose skyward until the grass was lost in a bank of stunted pines and the pines ran out in bare blue rock. For a time the ultimate heights were veiled in clouds of pale gray chiffon, but as the mist slowly rose peak upon peak was revealed—one of them, Lalla Kedija, upward of seventy-five hundred feet in height—each with a little village perched on its summit like a small red bonnet. Beyond the nearer mountains the higher peaks of the Djurjuras reared themselves against the cloudless sky in lonely majesty, wrapped in robes of green and crowned with snow.