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them, but which were in themselves strong enough and well provided with guns. The chief of these were:

The Citadel, or Kasba, and Palace of the Deys (page 207), which at the time of the French conquest was defended by two hundred guns. Behind it, close to the Quartier des Tagarins, was the old Fort de l'Étoile, a ruin at the time of the invasion of the French, and from which they made their attack upon the Kasba. It was said to have been destroyed by a negress, a slave jealous of her master. Setting fire to a train of gunpowder beneath the fort, she at the same time sacrificed herself, her faithless lover, and the object of her resentment-the new favourite. On the height above the Kasba, to the right, commanding the whole city, is the Fort de l'Empereur, so called from its being built on the spot where Charles V. pitched his camp during his disastrous expedition to Algiers in 1541 (page 321). The Fort des Vingt-Quatre Heures, known to the Arabs by the name of Bordj-Setti-Takelilt, the head of the holy negress, which once stood on the site of the Artillery Arsenal, was destroyed in 1853. The Fort Neuf, between the Place Bab-el-Oued and the sea, is now used as a military prison. The Fort des Anglais, on the road to St. Eugène, is a cabaret. Of the fortress on Pointe Pescade, known as Barbarossa's Castle, only a ruin remains, and in the contrary direction Fort Bab-Azoun, at the end of the Boulevard de la République, now forms a part of the city wall, and is also used as a prison. This fort was at the time of the French occupation armed with forty-eight guns.

But the chief care of the Turkish Government was to defend the port.

Q

"Five great pieces of cannon defend the gate at the end of the mole," writes Pierre Dan, "and on the mole itself are sixty-six large guns, most of them taken as prizes from the Christian powers." A battery was also established on the little island in the harbour, the Djefna, and, at the time of the French occupation, the whole port was absolutely bristling with guns.

The ancient city possessed five great gates. Two looked towards the sea-the gate of the Fishers, on the shore close to the Arsenal; the gate of the Mole, or Marina, on which, we are told, hung as trophies, five great bells, the only ones in the city, which had been taken from the Spaniards at Oran; the gate Bab-el-Oued, which was situated at the end of the street of that name.

"Before this gate is the spot which these Barbarians have set apart for the death of Christians, and where many have received and still do receive the crown of martyrdom, preferring rather to suffer all imaginable torments, than to renounce the faith of the true God, to follow the errors of Mahomet. And this is the only place in the town where Christians are executed."-Dan Pierre. Histoire de Barbarie.

This was also the place where Jews suffered death by burning.

The New Gate (Porte Neuve), in the Rue de la Lyre, formed the boundary of the city on the south-west side. It was by this gate that the French entered Algiers.

Beneath it was the gate Bab-Azoun, in the Place Bresson.

"In this faubourg lodge those Arab and Moorish merchants who bring provisions to the city. It is the same place where the Turks are executed, and one always sees some unfortunate wretches impaled on the hooks."-Dan Pierre.

This was the usual method of punishment. The victim

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was flung from the top of the battlements, and being caught by some of the long iron spikes with which the gate was furnished, was left thus to perish by a miserably lingering death-of pain, or exhaustion, or starvation, as the case might be.

Mrs. Broughton, in the account of her childish reminiscences, relates several cases of execution on the hooks of Bab-Azoun at the early part of this century; and indeed the French, on entering Algiers in 1830, were horrified to find the impaled bodies and dissevered heads of a number of Europeans ranged upon this gate. They were their own countrymen, the unfortunate survivors of the two French men-of-war-the Silene and the Aventure-which had been wrecked a short while before, in the bay!

The modern gates are the Porte Bab-Azoun, on the Route de Constantine; the Porte d'Isly, close above it; the Porte du Sahel, leading from the Kasba and upper town to the west; and the Porte Bab-el-Oued, leading to St. Eugène and Pointe Pescade.

The gates are all provided with drawbridges, fortified, and guarded, and altogether Algiers has the appearance of being a very strong city, although some French military critics are of opinion, that some portion of the very large sum that has been expended on making the town invulnerable to an impossible assault from the Arabs, would have been better employed in rendering it secure from an attack by sea.

The total strength of the French army in Algeria is seventy thousand men, consisting of three regiments of Zouaves, three regiments of native rifles known as Turcosthe dress of both these troops being very much the same as

that of the old janissaries-one foreign regiment, and three regiments of light infantry known by the name of Zephyrs, and formed out of soldiers convicted of some military offence. The name, which was originally a sobriquet given to one of the regiments, has survived and been accepted by the three. The cavalry consists of three regiments of Chasseurs d'Afrique, and three regiments of Spahis, or native light horse.

The dress of these last is extremely striking, consisting of the white haik, which covers the head, and a long scarlet cloak. They are mounted on white Arabs, with the peculiar. native saddle and trappings, and are altogether ideal warriors of the desert. Very few are stationed in the town of Algiers, but they form the body-guard of the GovernorGeneral, and never fail to excite the stranger's interest and attention, as the orderlies are seen galloping, or as it seems rather flying, along the Boulevard on their spirited little steeds.

Indeed, the varied and peculiar costumes of the different French regiments, the turbaned and red-jacketed Zouaves, the turbaned and blue-jacketed Turcos, the pale blue uniforms of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and the barbaric splendour of the Spahis, contribute not a little to the peculiar gaiety and richness of colouring, of every Algerian street

scene.

CHAPTER XIII.

JARDIN MARENGO.-FORT DES VINGT-QUATRE HEURES.-GERONIMO THE MARTYR.-ZAOUIA OF ABD-ER-RAHMAN.

"Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death."

Young's Night Thoughts.

ETTING out from the Place du Gouvernement, an

SETT

arcaded street leads in a northerly direction, the Rue Bab-el-Oued, or the river-gate, to the gate of the same name. This street is a continuation of the Rue Bab-Azoun, is built in the same style, and will be found to contain some good shops, though perhaps, scarcely equal to those in the BabAzoun. These streets, which existed under a very different aspect in the Arab time, were then, as now, the seat of the chief commercial activity of the city. They were then, like the rest of the Arab streets, so narrow as to be impassable to vehicles. Indeed, we are told by Mrs. Broughton, that in 1806-12

"There was only one carriage in all Algiers, which was kept in the court of the Dey's garden-house. That was without wheels, and was intended to be suspended between two mules. But it could not be used, as the streets were not wide enough to allow it to pass. It was therefore preserved as a useless appanage of royal state, the wonder of all who were permitted the honour of gazing upon it."

We are also informed by Pananti, 1814, that there was