The walled gardens of Mustapha Supérieur are places of sheer delight, heavy with fragrance and aglow with color. They are crowded with plants and trees of every variety and clime—palms from the South Seas and Malaysia; Japanese bamboos, eucalyptus and blue-gums from Australia; Spanish oranges and lemons; dragon-trees from China; stately rows of dark Italian cypress; fruit-trees from the south of France. Splashes of vivid color are provided by great masses of crimson or magenta bougainvillea, by clusters of arum-lily, iris, and narcissus. As for roses, they are everywhere, clambering over the walls, festooning arbors and summer-houses, forming hedges of pink, yellow, red, or white. And the ground is covered with a purple carpet of long-stemmed Algerian violets whose perfume fills the air. The suburb of Mustapha takes its name from one of the deys, who erected the palace now used as the official residence of the governor-general of Algeria. Few if any of the world’s rulers can boast such a residence, for it is built in the colorful Moorish style, rich in marbles, faiences, and mosaics, and stands amid gardens of fairy-like loveliness which look down upon the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean. It did not prove a good investment for its luxury-loving builder, however, for the vast sums he squandered on it so angered the Janizaries, whose pay was perpetually in arrears, as to bring about his disgrace and death. The ideal time to see the gardens of the palace is during an evening fête—one of those scented, languorous African nights when the moon throws a white beam athwart the darkened waters of the Mediterranean, when the fragrance of flowers intoxicates the senses, and the air is as soft as the cheek of a lovely woman. The trees are festooned with myriads of little colored lights, red, blue, and white; across the velvet lawns or along the marble terraces stroll men in brilliant uniforms, and bare-shouldered, bejeweled women; beneath a clump of palms the red-jacketed spahi band is softly playing.... If you are interested in seeing what the soil and climate of Algeria are capable of producing in the way of vernal loveliness, you should not fail to visit the Jardin d’Essai, an extremely successful attempt at acclimatization on a large scale, which was established by the government nearly a century ago on the flats of Mustapha Inférieur. If you expect something unusual in landscape gardening, however, you will be disappointed, for there is nothing here to compare with the superb effects which have been achieved at Peradeniya in Ceylon or in those most wonderful of all tropical gardens at Buitenzorg in Java. But the Jardin d’Essai has one feature which in itself well repays the trouble of a visit: a magnificent avenue of India-rubber trees which have attained gigantic size, in some cases twenty feet around and three times that in height.