The Last Frontier

ge thing for an Eastern woman-and the clearness of her café-au-lait complexion was emphasised by carmine lips and

antine and Biskra and was quite openly admiring the very tight light-blue tunic and the very loose scarlet ridi

andsome gi

, very much as though he were appraising a horse. "An Ouled-Na?l's face is her fortun

I, taking another one myself. "I once travelled twelv

different in people, manners, and customs from either the desert or the littoral. Here, in this fertile borderland, where the red tarbooshes and baggy trousers of the French outposts are the sole signs of civilisation, is the home of

of a shock, after seeing these petite and pretty and indescribably picturesque women on their native heath, or rather on their native sands, to learn that from earliest childhood they are trained for a life of indifferent vi

l promptly converts all of her earnings that she can spare into gold, linking these gold pieces together into a sort of breastplate, not at all unlike that jingling, glittering affair which Mary Garden wears in her portrayal of Salome. When this golden garment becomes long enough to reach from her slender, supple neck to her st

"Petite, piquant, and in

e wife and daughter of a nomad

ENS OF T

developed and trained and suppled until they will respond to her wishes as readily as [Pg 59] her slender, henna-stained fingers. Her lustrous, blue-black hair is brushed and combed and oiled and brushed again; she is taught to play the hautboy, the zither, and the flute and to sing the weird and plaintive songs the Arab loves; to make the thick, black native coffee and with inimitable dexterity to roll a cigarette. By the time she is thirteen she is ready to make her début in the dance-hall of some Algerian town, whence, after three or four or possibly five years of a life of indifferent virtue, she returns, a-clank with gold pieces, to the tented village from which she came, to marry some sheikh or camel-dealer an

f a sheikh of some importance, was leaving Biskra, to which town he had been paying a short visit with his mother. He was taking back with him one of his countrywomen, a dancing-girl named Kadra, who had been a resident in the Rue Sainte, as Biskra's Tenderloin is known, for two or three years, and was quite celebrated for her beauty, with the intention of marrying her. Here was this girl, after such an amazing episode in her career, quietly dressed, veiled to the eyes, and carefully chaperoned by the prospective bridegroom's mother, returning to assume a position o

ch, Egyptian, and Syrian, spread from ocean to ocean under the vulgar but descriptive nickname of "the houchee-kouchee." As a matter of fact, the danse du ventre, as seen in the questionable resorts of our own country, has about as much in common with the real dance of the desert people, as performed on a silken carpet spread before the tent of some nomad sheikh, as the so-called "Spanish fandango" of the vaudeville st

as much as it would all Moslems, for though [Pg 62] they may be somewhat lacking in morals they are never lacking in clothes. The women of the Ouled-Na?l are considerably below the medium height and, owing to the peculiar fashion in which their gaudy-hued tarlatan skirts are bunched out around the waist and are shortened to display their trim ankles and massive silver anklets, they appear even smaller than they really ar

e has so much of it, in fact, that there is no gold to be had in Algeria. Ask for na

ible, m

it impossibl

gold, m'sieur," is

ire, scenting a robbery or an

m'sieur," the cashier

hanged for gold pieces-whether French napoleons, English sovereigns, or Turkish liras she is not at all particular-which, linked together in that golden armour of which I have already spoken, envelops her lithe

ements? During my stay in one of these Algerian towns an Arab, stealthily coming up behind an Ouled-Na?l as she was returning one night from the dance-hall through the narrow, deserted streets, drove a knife between her shoulders and, snatching the little fortune which hung about her neck, fled with it into the desert. But the arm of the French law is very long, reaching even across the sand wastes of th

eath sentences must be confirmed by the Bey in person, the condemned man being brought before him as he sits on his gilt-and-velvet throne in the great white palace of the Bardo. In the presence of the sovereign the murderer is suddenly brought face to face with the members of his victim's family, for such things are always done dramatically in the East. The Bey then inquires of the family if they insist on the execution of the murderer, or if they are willing to accept the blood-money, as it is called, a sum equivalent to one hundred and forty dollars, which in theory is paid by the murderer to the relatives of his victims as a sort of indemnity if he is allowed to escape with his life

ortly and easy-going Oriental who has a marked aver

okesman of the family, salaaming until

lah the Compassionate have mercy upon him! Turn him toward the gate of the Bardo," which last is the local euphemism for "T

a branch of that equally white and equally mysterious Berber race who occupy the Moroccan ranges of the Atlas. Thirteen hundred years ago they came to North Africa from out of the East, bringing with them a civilisation and a culture and institutions distinctively their own. Retreating into their mountain fastnesses befor

distinction with a difference, for, whereas the former sell their daughters in cold blood and take not the slightest interest in what becomes of them thereafter, the Kabyle parent expects, even if he does not always insist, that the man who purchases his daughter shall marry her. A fine, upstanding Kabyle maiden of fifteen or thereabouts, with the lines of a thorough

their sparkling eyes, their full red lips, their lithe, slender bodies, and their haughty, insolent manners, suggest a civilisation older and more sensuous, and entirely alien to our own. The humblest peasant girl, grinding the family flour be

to heliotrope, to violet, and so on every few minutes (no, I didn't believe it either, until I tried it); and, secondly, by the clink and jingle of the bracelets, anklets, necklaces, and bijoux of gold, silver, turquoise, and coral with which they are loaded down, a

hese Kabyles, for at the conclusion of a wedding ceremony the bridegroom, walking backward, holds before him an unsheathed dagger and the bride, following him, keeps the point of it between her teeth. Another wedding custom of Kabylia, no less strange, consists of the partial martyrdom of the bride, who, clad in her marriage finery, stands for an entire

the cemetery. You can see them for yourself any Friday afternoon if you will loiter without the whitewashed gateway to the cemetery of Bou-Kabrin, on the hill above Algiers, for they believe that on that day-the Moslem Sabbath-the spirits of the dead re-visit the earth, and hence their weekly pilgrimage to the cemetery to keep them company. When the sun begins to sink behind the Atlas

permitted to see her, for despite all precautions she sometimes [Pg 70] manages to catch glimpses of people through the lattices of her harem windows-but she may not receive a visit from her father or brother without her husband's permission. When she is ill enough to require the services of a physician-and she has to be very ill indeed before one is summoned-incredibly elaborate are the preparations. All the women of her household are ranged about the bed, while her servants hide her under the bedclothes almost to the point of suffocation. If her pulse has to be felt a servant covers her hand and arm so carefully that only an inch or so of her wrist is visible. If she

IN THE CEME

evisit the earth, and hence the weekly pilgr

and or wife may divorce the other by a simple formality, without assigning any reason whatever. As a matter of fact, however, actual divorce by the man is rare, the Moslem husband usually preferring to get rid of his wife by a process called repudiation, which bears with great injustice and cruelty on the woman. If he tires of her for any reason, or merely wishes to replace her, he drives her away with the words "Woman, get thee hence; take thy goods and go." In this case, although the husband is free to remarry,

attle within an iron grill, take no part in the proceedings which so intimately affect their futures, their interests being left in the hands of a voluble and gesticulative avocat. On either side of the hall is a series of alcoves, and in each alcove, seated cross-legged on a many-cushioned divan, is a gold-turbaned and green-robed cadi. To him the husband states his case, the wife putting in her defence-if she has any-through her lawyer and rarely appearing in person. The judge considers the facts in silence, gravely str

o a liaison with a man, instead of a divorce trial there would be two funerals. To put his wife and her paramour out of the way without detection is a matter of no great difficulty for an Arab husband, for if any one disappears in a Mohammedan country the harem system renders a search extremely difficult, if not, indeed, wholly out of the question. In fact, it has happened very frequently, especially in such populous centres as Tangier, A

he does not send traders to Circassia or raiders to Uganda, but he applies to one of the well-known dealers in Tetuan, or Tripoli, or Trebizond, a marriage contract is drawn up, and all the ceremonies of legal wedlock are gone through by proxy. By resorting to these fictitious marriages and similar subterfuges, the owner of a harem may procure as many slaves, white, brown, or black, as he wishes, and once they are within the walls of his house, no one can possibly interfere to release them, for, the police being under no conditions permitted to violate the privacy of a harem, there is obviously no safeguard for the liberty, or even the lives, of its inmates. As a resu

an, who rushed to greet him, tied her hands, and dragging her into the street gave her a furious beating in the presence of the astounded neighbours. No, she had not been unfaithful to him, he said, between the blows, nor had she been unkind. He not only was not tired of her, so he assured the onlookers, but she was a veritable jewel of a wife. Finally, when his arm grew tired and he stopped to take breath, he explained that, passing thr

ded in tracing the runaway couple to the sheikh's village, the husband quickly found that plans had been made against his coming, for the villagers asserted to a man that they had known the eloping pair for years as man and wife and that the real husband was nothing but an impudent impostor. Unable to regain his wife, he then appealed to the French authorities of the district, who were at first at somewhat of a loss how to act in the circumstances, for the Europeans in North Africa are always sitting on top of a powder barrel and a hasty or ill-considered action may result in blowing them higher than Gilderoy's kite. Finally, an inspiration came to the juge d'instruction before whom the matter had been brought. Placing the dogs of the real husband in one room, and those of the pretended h

teens she has been taught how to cut and fit a burnoose, to sew a tent cover, and to make a couscous, that peculiar dish of [Pg 78] half-ground barley, raisins, honey, hard-boiled eggs, and mangled fowl, stewed with a gravy in a sealed vessel, of which the Arabs are so fond. By the time she is ten her parents have probably received and accepted an offer for her hand-and praise Allah for ridding them of her!-and by the time she is twelve she is married and a mother. When a match has been decided upon-and it is by no means an uncommon thing for an unborn child to become conditionally engaged-several days of haggling as to the price which is to be paid for her ensue, the bridegroom eventually getting her at a cost of several camels, cattle, or goats, her value being based upon her looks and the position of her parents. On the day of the wedding the bride-on whose unveiled face, remember, the bridegroom has never laid eyes-concealed within a swaying camel-litter which looks for all the world like a young balloon, preceded by a band and accompanied by all her relatives, is taken with much cerem

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