inevitable consequence has been, that the French are opposed, not by an army in the field, but by a people in arms. The spirit in which the instructive works before us has been conceived is, however, far more humane, judicious, and politic; and we trust that erelong an important change will take place in the administration of the Province; and that these costly and unsuccessful attempts at mere military domination will be superseded, by a system of rule adapted to the usages of the country.

It is time, however, that we should lay before our readers the principal Geographical facts, established by the researches of M. Carette, and Colonel Daumas; upon which all that can at present be known of the character and destinies of the inhabitants of Northern Africa may be said to depend. The fundamental distinction between the two regions of the Tell and the Sahara had been adopted, from a very early period, by the Arabian geographers; and the natural diversities upon which that distinction rests, are so clear and strong, that the line which separates the one portion of the territory from the other, had been laid down with sufficient accuracy by Dr Shaw. The Tell derives its name from the Latin word Tellus; and that name is applied to the zone or strip of land, proper for tillage, which is interposed between the Sahara and the sea. The breadth of this zone varies from about fifty miles, in the provinces of Oran and Titteri, to one hundred and twenty, in the eastern province of Constantine. It is subdivided by the spurs of the great chain of the Atlas (applying that name collectively) into fertile basins of land, producing wheat and barley in great abundance. These basins are cultivated by Arabs, living in tents, without any settled or walled places of abode. The highlands are occupied by the Kabyles, or tribes of the Berber race-a people more shrewd, industrious, and intelligent than the Arabs of the plains. The ' remarkable chain of eminences,' says Dr Shaw, which some'times borders on the Sahara, and sometimes lies within the 'Tell, may well be taken to be the Astrixis of Orvinus, the 'same with Mount Atlas so noted in history. Yet, it may be observed, that this mountain is not always of that extraordinary height or bigness which has been attributed to it by the ancients, being rarely or ever equal, as far as I have seen, to some ' of the greater mountains of our own island; and perhaps can nowhere stand in competition with either the Alps or the Ap'penines. If we conceive, in an easy ascent, a number of hills, 'usually of the perpendicular height of four, five, or six hundred ' yards, with a succession of several groves and ranges of fruit and forest trees, growing one behind another upon them; and if to this prospect we sometimes add a rocky precipice

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of superior eminence and more difficult access, and place upon the side or summit of it a mud-walled Dashkra of the Kabyles, we shall then have a just and lively picture of Mount Atlas.'

This account of the English traveller is in the main correct. In many parts of the Tell the heights or highlands form a tract of table-land, of which the summit is sufficiently extensive to afford corn and pasture to a considerable population; whilst the abrupt sides of these elevations afford, as in the Caucasus, a strong natural defence from an enemy. Some of the mountains, however, as the Djebel Aoures and Djebel Amour, which are within the confines of the Sahara, are indicated in the valuable Orographic map annexed to M. Carette's volume, as of greater importance; though none of them rise to more than six thousand five hundred feet.

To form a correct conception of the Sahara, our readers must dismiss from their minds all the loose and fantastic conceptions which have been attached, from time immemorial, to the interior of Northern Africa. Instead of a torrid region, where boundless steppes of burning sand are abandoned to the roving horsemen of the Desert, and to beasts of prey, and where the last vestiges of Moorish civilization expire, long before the traveller arrives at Negroland and the savage Communities of the interior, the Sahara is now ascertained to consist of a vast archipelago of Oases; each of them peopled by a tribe of the Moorish race or its offsets, more civilized, and more capable of receiving the lessons of civilization, than the houseless Arabs of the Tell ;-cultivating the date-tree with application and ingenuity, inhabiting walled towns, living under a regular government, for the most part of a popular origin;-carrying to some perfection certain branches of native manufactures, and keeping up an extensive system of commercial intercourse with the northern and central parts of the African Continent, and from Mogador to Mecca, by the enterprise and activity of their Caravans. Each of the Oases of the Sahara-which are divided from one another by sandy tracts, bearing shrubs and plants fit only for the nourishment of cattle-presents an animated group of towns and villages. Every village is encircled by a profusion of fruit-bearing trees. The palm is the monarch of their orchards,—as much by the grace of its form, as by the value of its productions; and the pomegranate, the fig-tree, and the apricot, cluster around its lofty stem. The lions, and other beasts of prey, with which poetry has peopled the African wilds, are to be met with only in the mountains of the Tell,-never in the plains of the Sahara. The robber tribes of the Tuarichs frequent the southern frontier

of the Sahara, and the last tracts of habitable land which intervene between these Oases and the real Desert; but, in the Sahara itself, communications, carried on after the fashion of the country, are regular and secure. War is, indeed, of frequent occurrence between the neighbouring tribes,—either for the possession of disputed territories, or the revenge of supposed injuries; but all that is yet known of these singular Communities, shows them to be living in a completely constituted state of civil societyeminently adapted to the peculiar part of the globe which they inhabit,—governed by the strong traditions of a primitive people, and fulfilling with energy and intelligence the strange vocation of their life. The population of the Fiafi, or most northern tract of the Sahara, between the 32° and 29° parallels of latitude, is more dense than that of the Tell, or region near the coast; though even there, the Oases are often separated by two or three days' march over barren sand. The Kifar is the sandy plain beyond, which produces a scanty pasture after the winter rains; and, to the south of that region lies the Talat, or sea of sand, to be crossed without danger and suffering by none, but the dromedary and the Arab horseman. The sedentary population of each of the Oases of the Sahara, centres in a town of more or less importance, and devotes itself to the cultivation of the palm and the date, or to manufactures. Round this town are assembled the dependent ksour, or villages of the tribes, some pastoral and some mercantile, which are in continual motion, and carry on what may be termed the external relations of the community. All the corn consumed by these villages and towns is grown in the Tell. The date, which is the great edible product of the Sahara, becomes unwholesome, and even fatal to life, if it be eaten without a proper admixture of other food; so that the industry of one-half of the inhabitants of the Sahara consists in preparing commodities for the purposes of trade, whilst the other half carries on this trade in the distant markets of the north; and of these no inconsiderable number emigrate to the coast for a long term of years.

It is evident that communities organized in this manner, and depending on foreign trade and mercantile speculation for their subsistence, as well as upon the assiduous cultivation of the tracts of land which they inhabit, must have the essential and distinctive marks of a civilization more or less perfect; but still, strongly contrasted with the indolence, the brutish contentment, and the impracticable character of the roving barbarian, or the mere savage. The mode of life of the inhabitant of the Sahara is a species of education, which may hereafter place him in direct and welcome intercourse with the civilized countries of

Europe. The following extract is longer than we are accustomed to give; but it relates to Communities so little known, and presents so intelligent and graphic a picture of their social condition, that we feel assured our readers will thank us for it :

The transportation of merchandise in the interior of Algeria, from the south to the north, and from the north to the south, is chiefly effected by the wandering tribes, (nedjá,) whilst that from the east to the west, and from the west to the east, is principally carried on by trading caravans, (gafla.)

Almost all the Sahara tribes are accustomed to a system of annual peregrination, which must have existed from time immemorial, inasmuch as it is based upon the nature of the climate and the produce, and the primary wants of their existence. This general movement is commonly performed in the following manner :-During the winter and spring the tribes are collected in the waste tracts of the Sahara, which, at this season of the year, supply water and fresh vegetation, but they never remain more than three or four days on any one spot; and, when the pasture is exhausted, they strike their tents and go to establish themselves elsewhere. Towards the end of the spring they pass through the towns of the Sahara, where their merchandise is deposited. They load their camels with dates and woollen stuffs, and then turn their steps towards the north, taking with them their whole wandering city-women, dogs, herds, and tents—for it is at this season that the springs begin to dry and the plants to wither on the Sahara, at the same time that the corn is ripe in the Tell. There they arrive at the moment of the harvest, when corn is abundant and cheap, and thus they take a double advantage of the season, by abandoning the waste as it becomes arid, and seeking their fresh store of provisions in the north, when the markets are overstocked with grain. The summer they pass in this country, in commercial activity, exchanging their dates and woollen manufactured goods for corn, raw wool, sheep, and butter; whilst their herds are allowed to browse freely upon the lands, which lie fallow after the gathering in of the harvest. The signal for the return homewards is given at the end of the summer the camels are reloaded, the tents again struck, and the wandering city once more marches forth, as it came, in short days' journeys towards the south. The Sahara is regained about the middle of October, the period when the dates are ripe. A month is passed in gathering and storing this fruit; another is devoted to the exchange of the wheat and barley and raw wool for the year's dates, and the woollen stuffs, the produce of the yearly labour of the women. When all this business is concluded, and the merchandise stored away, the tribes quit the towns; and lead their flocks and herds from pasture-land to pasture-land among the waste tracts of the Sahara, until the following summer calls for a renewal of the same journey, the same system of

trade.

Such, with certain exceptions hereafter signalized, is the general law by which the commercial movements of the southern tribes are regulated.

The tribes of the Tell, on the contrary, have no system of annual

peregrination: they never wander beyond the limits of their territory, and change only from spot to spot, according as the various portions of their soil require, now to be tilled, now left fallow to the flocks, now manured. They thus superintend the progress of their crops, pitching their tents near them for protection, until the harvest be over, and then bringing their corn with care and concealment, in order to avoid the depredatory results of a Razzia. Whilst thus employed in the culture of corn, (their only source of wealth,) the Tell tribes have no need of any fixed dwellings. Exposed to the spoliation of the authorities, and to the agressions of other tribes, they felt that stability of habitation would only more easily render them a prey to the usurpations which menace them, or offer a more alluring bait to covetous neighbours, and that their power of locomotion is their only safeguard. The stakes of their tents, and the blades of their corn, alone fix them to that soil upon which they temporarily dwell.

In the Sahara, the culture of corn is little or nothing. The palm is still, as it has ever been, the principal source of the wealth of the country; and the palm is a tree which, unlike the shortlived crops of corn more suited to the habits of a wandering tribe, requires continual tending, and imposes on its cultivator the necessity of a permanent residence. The construction of fixed dwellings, which is optional in the Tell, becomes, consequently, a matter of necessity in the Sahara. It is not caprice, it is the very nature of the country, which has caused it to be covered with towns and villages. By the side of the plantations, however, extend the arid plains, which, although unfitted for culture, are advantageous as pasture ground; and the natural consequence is, that the gardener of the Sahara becomes a shepherd also; whilst, at the same time, the country producing no objects of primary necessity, but mere articles of comparative superfluity, it evidently follows that its inhabitants are obliged to endeavour to exchange these articles for others, and dispose of them among the populations possessing what they themselves need. The southern tribes have thus, necessarily, assumed a double character-on the one hand, sedentary, as gardeners, on the other, wandering, as merchants and rearers of flocks; and this double character has, consequently, produced in the Sahara a double population, one portion of which is essentially sedentary, the other essentially wandering in its nature. This double population, again, has thus assumed distinct characteristics. The inhabitants of the towns are employed in the construction of dwelling-houses, the culture of gardens, and the manufacture of woven stuffs; whilst the dwellers among the tribes are engaged in the tending of herds, and the transportation of merchandise.

'Although distinct in character, however, these two populations are so closely associated in interests, that they become inseparable. The gardeners of the towns are the owners of the cattle committed to the charge of shepherds among the tribes; the shepherds of the tribes are also landed proprietors, for they find tenants of their possessions in the The wandering Arab is not only a mere carrier, he is a culti

towns.