Agriculturally and mineralogically, Algeria, despite a century of French occupation, is still a land of promise rather than of fulfilment, but the promise is great and the achievement already remarkable when it is remembered that the history of the French occupation has been the history of a struggle against renascent barbarism. But it is time that I brought this somewhat pedantic sketch of the country and its people to an end, for over there, topping yonder line of hills, are the forts which guard Oran. Oran, the second city of Algeria, the capital of a department, the headquarters of an army division, an important naval station, and the center of a busy trade, is built on the steep slopes of the Djebel Murjojo, which rises to a height of nineteen hundred feet above the pearl-blue waters of the gulf. The town was originally cut in half by a deep ravine, or _wahran_, from which it takes its name, but this is now largely covered by ramps, boulevards, promenades, and modern buildings. Oran is frankly modern and European, the most Oriental building in the city being the railway-station. Though the city is picturesquely situated, with some beautiful parks and lovely views, it is wholly lacking in the color and quaintness which are the charms of Tunis and Algeria. Perhaps this is due to the preponderance of Europeans, who, unlike the natives, dwell in the bustling matter-of-fact present rather than in the sleepy romantic past. Be this as it may, Oran has the air of a very busy and highly prosperous boom town, and the people whom we saw in its restaurants and hotels were more suggestive of the oil regions of Texas than of a former pirate stronghold on the coast of Barbary. In its European population Oran is more than half Spanish (Cartagena in Spain is only 130 miles away); in its history it is almost wholly Spanish. Though attempts have been made to identify it with the Quiza of the Romans, no Roman remains have been found here, and its foundation is more properly ascribed to the Andalusian Arabs who settled here at the beginning of the tenth century and gave the place its name. Rapidly rising into importance as a seaport, Oran was taken and retaken, pillaged, destroyed, and rebuilt by the various conquerors of northern Africa. In the course of a half-century it changed hands nine times, attaining its highest prosperity at about the time Columbus was setting out to discover the Western World, when it became subject to the sultans of Tlemcen. The extent of its trade, the magnificence of its mosques, and the number of its institutions of learning spread the city’s fame; but wealth and luxury began to sap the energy of the Oronais, though the rapid decline of the city was primarily due to the piratical activities of the Moors expelled from Spain, who from Mers-el-Kebir, a strongly protected harbor four miles to the west of Oran, waged a relentless sea-war for booty and revenge against the Dons.