Ah, me! for the land that is sown With the harvest of despair! Where the burning cinders, blown From the lips of the overthrown Enceladus, fill the air! Where ashes are heaped in drifts Over vineyard and field and town, Whenever he starts and lifts His head through the blackened rifts Of the crags that keep him down! See, see! the red light shines! 'Tis the glare of his awful eyes! And the storm-wind shouts through the pines Of Alps and of Apennines, "Enceladus, arise!" THE ZOUAVES. The decree of October 1, 1830, approved by a royal ordinance, March 21, 1831, created two battalions of Zouaves. To perceive the necessity for this body of troops, to understand the nature of the service required of them, and to obtain a just notion of their important position in African affairs, it will be necessary to glance, for a moment, at the previous history of Algeria under the Deys, and especially at the history of that Turkish militia which they were to replace,--a body of irresponsible tyrants, which, since 1516, had exercised the greatest power in Africa, and had rendered their name hated and feared by the most distant tribes. Algeria was settled in 1492, by Moors driven from Spain. They recognized a kind of allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey, which was, however, only nominal; he appointed their Emirs, but further than this there was no restraint on their actions. Hard pressed by the Spaniards in 1509, the Emirs sent in haste to Turkey for aid; and Barbarossa, a noted pirate, sailed to their help, drove out the Christians, but fixed upon the Moors the yoke of Turkish sovereignty. In 1516, he declared himself Sultan, or Dey, of Algiers; and his brother succeeding him, the Ottoman power was firmly established in the Northwest of Africa. Hated by the people of this great territory, both Moors and Arabs, menaced not only by their dissensions, but frequently attacked by the Christians from the North, there was but one method by which the Dey could maintain his power. He formed a large body of mercenary soldiers, drawn entirely from Turkey, united with himself and each other by a feeling of mutual dependence and common danger, and bound by no feeling of interest or affection to the inhabitants of the soil. Brave they were, as they proved in 1541, against Charles the Fifth, whose forces they defeated and nearly destroyed at Haratsch,--in 1565, at the siege of Malta,--in 1572, in the seafight of Lepanto,--in many smaller combats at different times, defending their land triumphantly in 1775 against the Spaniards under O'Reilly and Castejon. Hardy and ready they were, from the very necessity of the case; for they were hated and dreaded beyond measure by the Arabs, and theirs was a life of constant exertion. Other than united they could not be; for they were in continual warfare of offence or of defence; they suppressed rebellion and anarchy,--for without a leader