Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Dismounting from shipboard, we become landsmen for the remainder of our
journey, and wave adieu to the steamboat which has brought us as we
linger a moment on the mole of Bona. This city is named from the ancient
Hippo, out of whose ruins, a mile to the southward, it was largely
built. The Arabs call it "the city of jujube trees"--Beled-el-Huneb. To
the Roumi (or Christian) traveler the interest of the spot concentrates
in one historic figure, that of Saint Augustine. In the basilica of
Hippo, of which the remains are believed to have been identified in some
recent excavations, the sainted bishop shook the air with his learned
and penetrating eloquence. Here he exhorted the faithful to defend their
religious liberty and their lives, uncertain if the Vandal hordes of
Genseric were not about to sweep away the faith and the language of
Rome. Here, where the forest of El Edoug spreads a shadow like that of
memory over the scene of his walks and labors, he brought his grand life
of expiation to a holy close, praying with his last breath for his
disciples oppressed by the invaders. We reach the site of Hippo (or
Hippone) by a Roman bridge, restored to its former solidity by the
French, over whose arches the bishop must have often walked, meditating
on his youth of profligacy and vain scholarship, and over the abounding
Divine grace which had saved him for the edification of all futurity.
[Illustration: SHOPKEEPER AT BONA.]
Bona has a street named Saint Augustine, but it is, by one of the
strange paradoxes which history is constantly playing us, owned entirely
by Jews, and those of one sole family. This fact indicates how the
thrifty race has prospered since the French occupancy. Formerly
oppressed and ill-treated, taxed and murdered by the Turks, and only
permitted to dress in the mournfulest colors, the Jew of Algeria hid
himself as if life were something he had stolen, and for which he must
apologize all his days. Now, treated with the same liberality as any
other colonist, the Jew indulges in every ostentation of dress except as
to the color of the turban, which, in small towns like Bona, still
preserves the black hue of former days of oppression. On Saturdays the
children of Jacob fairly blaze with gold and gay colors. On their
working days they line the principal streets, eyeing the passers-by with
a cool, easy indifference, but never losing a chance of business. In
Algeria this race is generally thought to present a picture of
arrogance, knavery and rank cowardice not equaled on the face of the
globe. An English traveler saw an Arab, after maddening himself with
opium and absinthe, run a-mok among the shopkeepers who lined the
principal street of Algiers. Selecting the Hebrews, he drove before him
a throng of twenty, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, who
allowed themselves to be knocked down with the obedience of ninepins. A
Frenchman stopped the maniac after he had killed one Jew and wounded
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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