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
several, none of them making any effort at defence.
A few narrow streets, bordered with Moorish architecture, contain the
native industry of Bona. It is about equally divided between the Jews
and the M'zabites, who, like the Kabyles, are a remnant of the
stiff-necked old Berber tribe. The M'zabites preserve the pure Arab
dress--the haik, or small bornouse without hood, the broad breeches
coming to the knee, the bare legs, and the turban rolled up into a coil
of ropes. Thus accoutred, and squatting in the ledges of their small
booths, the jewelers, blacksmiths and tailors of Bona are found at their
work.
Returning to Philippeville by land, and remaining as short a time as
possible in this unedifying city, which is a bad and overheated
imitation of a French provincial town, we concede only so much to its
modern character as to hire a fine open carriage in which to proceed
inland toward Constantina. This city is reached after a calm, meditative
ride through sunny hills and groves. After so quiet a preparation the
first view of Constantina is fairly astounding. Encircled by a grand
curve of mountainous precipices, rises a gigantic rock, washed by a moat
formed of the roaring cascades of the river Rummel. On the flat top of
this naked rock, like the Stylites on his pillar, stands Constantina.
The Arabs used to say that Constantina was a stone in the midst of a
flood, and that, according to their Prophet, it would require as many
Franks to raise that stone as it would of ants to lift an egg at the
bottom of a milk-pot.
[Illustration: CONSTANTINA.]
This city, under its old Roman name of Cirta, was one of the principal
strongholds of Numidia. In 1837 it was one of the most hotly-defended
strongholds of the Kabyles. The French have renamed, as "Gate of the
Breach," the old Bab-el-Djedid, where Colonel Lamoriciere entered at the
head of his Zouaves. The city had to be conquered in detail, house by
house. Lamoriciere himself was wounded: the Kabyles, driven to their
last extremity, evacuated the Casbah on the summit of the rock, and let
down their women by ropes into the abyss; the ropes, overweighted by
these human clusters, broke, piling the bodies and fragments of bodies
in heaps beneath the precipice, while some of the natives descended the
steep rock safely with the agility of goats.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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