In violation of the solemn pledge that he would be permitted to take up his residence in Syria or Egypt, on the strength of which he laid down his arms, Abd-el-Kader and his family were detained in France for five years, but in 1852 he was released by Napoleon III on taking an oath never again to disturb Algeria. For a time he made his home in Brusa, the quaint old town which was once the capital of Turkey, but later he removed to Damascus. In July, 1860, when the Moslems of that city, taking advantage of the Druse revolt, attacked the Christian quarter and slaughtered more than three thousand Christians, Abd-el-Kader helped to suppress the outbreak and saved hundreds of Christian lives. For this the French government, which had granted the emir a pension of twenty thousand dollars a year, bestowed on him the grand cross of the Legion of Honor—the highest distinction in the gift of France. He visited Paris and London and attended the Paris Exposition of 1867, where he was acclaimed as a national hero; when, in 1871, the Algerians again rose in revolt, he wrote them urging them to accept the rule of France. In the spring of 1883 he passed from Damascus to the Moslem Paradise—a gallant soldier, a chivalrous enemy, and a great gentleman. Having shown in this rather lengthy historical interlude how Algiers came to be French, let us return to the city itself, or rather, to its environs. It is with a distinct sense of relief that one leaves _la ville européene_, with its crowded streets, its garish shops, the clatter and bustle of traffic over stone-paved thoroughfares, the honking of motors and the clang of tram-cars, and takes the road which ascends in long, steep zigzags to the lovely heights of Mustapha Supérieur and El Biar, where are situated the great tourist hotels and the enchanting, flower-smothered villas of the European residents. It has been said that no one can know how beautiful a sunset can be unless he has lived in a villa at El Biar with a terrace facing toward the west. That the view is superb there can be no denying; it is one of the grandest in the world, I should say. Rising above the exquisite curve of the crescent-shaped bay is a long line of mountains, their peaks usually dim in a mulberry haze or purple and sullen when shadowed by storm-clouds, but in clear weather standing out against the soft cerulean sky like cameos. But the scene, enchanting as it is, attains true majesty only on those rare occasions when the clouds lift sufficiently to reveal, behind and beyond the shore range, the mighty snow-peaks of the Grand Kabylia towering thousands of feet into the African blue.