But the Oriental life is slowly dying out; the quaint charm of the East is giving way to the hurly-burly of Western civilization. The tide of modernization is gradually but inexorably engulfing the hill on which what is left of the old pirate city stands. The ancient walls are gone, the gates also; most of the old minarets have disappeared. The palace of the deys has become barracks for French soldiers, and the last time I was there the newly washed uniforms of the troops were flapping on a line within sight of the pavilion where the last of the corsair rulers slapped the face of a French consul with his fan. Of the numerous mosques, none of which may be entered by non-Moslems, perhaps the most picturesque is that of Sidi Abd er Rahman, whose venerated tomb is within its precincts. Facing on the Rue de la Marine is the Great Mosque, the Djamaa el Kebir, distinguished by its magnificent colonnade. It is said to be the oldest in Algiers, an inscription on the pulpit showing that it existed in 1018. In the Place du Gouvernement is the new Mosque, which was built in 1660 in the form of a Greek cross according to designs drawn by a European architect who had been captured by the corsairs and enslaved. Though the almost total absence of any really fine examples of native art and architecture is due in part to centuries of warfare and the destruction caused by successive bombardments, it should be remembered that, even during the great days of Islam, Algiers was never, culturally speaking, of much importance. Such love of beauty as the Algerines possessed was fully satisfied by a beautiful woman; the building of a galley was far more important to them than the building of a mosque; the Christian captives who received the most consideration were not artists and architects but gunsmiths, ship-carpenters, and stone-masons; they carved their history with the sword rather than with the chisel. Unlike most cities of Barbary, Algiers is lacking in historic background. In Roman times, it is true, there stood on what is now the city’s waterfront a small town called Icosium, but it was presumably a place of little consequence, for it is seldom mentioned in history. The present city was founded by the Arabs about the middle of the tenth century, but it remained comparatively unimportant until the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492, when large numbers of them settled here and adopted the profession of piracy with the double motive of profit and revenge. From that period dates Algiers’s importance as the chief stronghold of the Barbary pirates. Thenceforward, for nearly three hundred and fifty years, its harbor afforded shelter to the corsair fleets that terrorized both shores of the Mediterranean, ravaged the Atlantic coast of Spain, sacked Baltimore in Ireland, and even carried their depredations as far westward as the Canaries and as far northward as Iceland.