Of all the large Algerian cities, Constantina is that which has best preserved its primitive signet. In most quarters it remains what it was under the Turks. These quarters are still undermined, rather than laid out, with close and crooked streets, where the rough white houses are pierced with narrow windows, closed to the inquisitive eye of the Roumi. The roofs are of tile, for the winters on the hills are too severe to permit the flat, terraced roofs of Algiers or Bona. These white houses, roofed with brown, give a perfectly original aspect to the city as seen from any of the neighboring eminences. The plateau of Mansourah is connected with the town by a magnificent Roman bridge, two stories in height, restored by the French. [Illustration: ROMAN BRIDGE AT CONSTANTINA.] From this bridge, which is three hundred feet high by three hundred and fifteen feet in length, and has five arches, you look down into the bed of the Rummel, while the vultures and eagles scream around you, and you recite the words of the poet El Abdery, who called this river a bracelet which encircles an arm. The gorge opens out into a beautiful plain rich with pomegranates, figs and orange trees. The sea is forty-eight miles away. The last bey of Constantina, not knowing that he was merely building for the occupancy of the French governors who were to come after him, decreed himself, some fifty years ago, a stately pleasure-dome, after the fashion of Kubla Khan. From the ruins of Constantina, Bona and Tunis, Ahmed Bey picked up whatever was most beautiful in the way of Roman marbles and carving. With these he built his halls, while the Rummel, through caverns measureless to man, ran on below. Some Frenchman of importance will now-a-days give you the freedom of this curious piece of Turkish construction, where, among storks and ibises gravely perched on one stilt, you examine the relics of Roman history, preserved by its very destroyers, according to the grotesque providence that watches over the study of archaeology. [Illustration: BEY'S PALACE, CONSTANTINA.] You are told how Ahmed, wishing to adorn the walls of his gallery or loggia with frescoes, of which he had heard, but which he had no artist capable of executing, whether Arab, Moor or Jew, applied to a prisoner. The man was a French shoemaker, who had never touched a brush: he vainly tried to decline the honor, but the bey was inflexible: "You are a vile liar: all the Christians can paint. Liberty if you succeed, death if you disobey me." [Illustration: SHAMPOOING THE ROUMI.]