A block or so back from the sea-front are the principal business streets of the city—broad, tree-shaded thoroughfares, crowded with tram-cars, motors, and carriages and lined with department-stores which are branches of the great establishments in Paris, specialty shops of every description, steamship agencies, consulates, news-stands (Sunday’s Paris newspapers are sold on Monday afternoon in Algiers), restaurants, cafés, and cinemas advertising the latest films of Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, and Charlie Chaplin. Barring the red tarbooshes of the Arabs, almost the only Oriental note is provided by the post-office, a new and imposing structure in neo-Moorish style, for throughout Africa the French have had the good taste to use a modified native style in the erection of public buildings instead of reproducing the monotonous ugliness of the Second Empire. [Illustration: ALGIERS, THE CAPITAL OF THE CORSAIRS In the harbor behind the Penon, where fishing-craft and merchant vessels now swing at their anchors, the pirate galleys lay The Kasbah, at the top of the town, has not greatly changed since it was the palace of Barbarossa and resounded to the groans of Christian slaves] But behind the screen formed by the modern buildings of the French city, where the hillside begins its steep ascent, lies the picturesque Arab quarter, a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous lanes, alleys, and culs-de-sac, turning and twisting like so many snakes. These thoroughfares are made to appear even narrower than they are by the peculiar architecture of the houses, whose second floors, supported on cedar poles, extend over the street until they almost touch, the space between being so narrow that it would seem as though a householder, by leaning from his second-story window, could shake hands with his opposite neighbor. A visit to the _quartier arabe_ leaves one breathless—breathless because you hold your breath in order to avoid inhaling the stenches which rise to heaven; breathless because all the streets are in effect staircases, the longest, the Rue de la Kasbah, which leads from the harbor to the citadel, having 497 uneven stone steps. I know, because I counted them. The streets being so steep and narrow, there are, of course, no carts, carriages, cars, nor camels; all burdens are transported by porters or donkeys, and he who desires to explore the native town must walk, or rather, climb, which is good for the figure but hard on the lungs. Up and down these narrow ways moves an endless procession of colorful and interesting figures—Arabs in turbans and tarbooshes, brawny, big-muscled stevedores with bare legs and arms, spahis in crimson cloaks, gabardined Jews with patriarchal beards, shifty-eyed Levantines, French soldiers, caps cocked rakishly and about their middles broad red sashes, priests of the missionary orders in white cassocks and shovel-hats, veiled Moslem women, slipping along between the