four berths, according to requirements. These should be secured beforehand; and luggage must be registered, or the companies do not hold themselves responsible for it. The average passage is thirty-six hours, and, as a rule, except in the Gulf of Lyons, which has an evil reputation, no great inconvenience will be experienced even by indifferent sailors. But the Mediterranean is, like all inland seas, subject to very sudden squalls, and at times extremely bad. weather is encountered. The Mediterranean is what is called a choppy sea, and many persons who have crossed the Atlantic without discomfort, suffer from their passage across the sunny southern pond.

The vessels take a due southern course, passing between the islands of Minorca and Majorca about twelve hours after leaving Marseilles, and sighting the coast of Spain. Long before dawn, on the second day of the voyage, the pleasing and welcome intelligence is circulated, "Algiers is in sight," and the traveller, seized with a sudden passion for early rising, hastily shakes himself out of his morning slumbers, and hurries on to deck.

If he fail to do so, he loses one of the most charming sights possible to conceive. As the vessel glides into the still waters of the port, Algiers, the Algiers of many a thrilling and romantic story, lies before him, vague, shadowy, and mysterious, with the curtain of night yet undrawn from her sleeping face. The vagueness and the mystery have a symbolism in them, to the mind of the European who thus takes his first glimpse of African soil-who has thus his first impression of the strange world that lies so near his shores, and yet whose life is so apart from his, so shrouded, so undeveloped. He looks about him in the luminous darkness,

FIRST VIEW OF ALGIERS.

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luminous as all Algerian nights are, with tender shades of blue on sea and sky, and his first impression is that he has chanced upon some gala night. Points of light flicker here and there among the shipping, and flit over the face of the smooth water; long lines of radiance twist and curve about the shore, and bright spots glowing one above the other, throw into relief quaint indistinguishable masses of white buildings that mount into the sky.

As he strains his eyes into the darkness, suddenly the gleam of the illumination seems to take a yellow hue-to lose its brilliancy; a faint tinge of blue passes over the mass of shadowy white, and, turning his head quickly eastward, he perceives that night is ending-that a new day is born. It grows and gathers strength, the blue in the eastern sky turning to pale gold, then shifting to softest tints of rose-colour that intensify and deepen every instant, until the whole horizon glows with trembling light and colour, bathed in the refulgent beauty of an African sunrise, while the sun, himself scarcely distinguishable in the glory of his surroundings, rises with slow majesty behind the seaward spur of the Djurdjura Mountains.

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It is a scene not soon to be forgotten, nor will stale its infinite variety." It will stamp itself upon the gazer's mind as a remembrance to be cherished in darker hours, and under greyer skies-to be recalled again and again, to live with him as a promise and hope of the future -"a joy for ever!"

Then is the moment, when the rose-glow lights her whitewashed walls with a magic beauty, for the traveller to take his first real look at Algiers-the warlike, the white-as she rises blushing from the sea.

"One wants a pencil dipped in colour to give any adequate concep

tion of it.

'Imagine terrace after terrace of pure white marble piled upon a sunny height, with a broad blue bay below; bright green hills stretching towards a vast velvety plain on either side; beyond all a line of snow-tipped mountains, dim and distant as clouds, and you have some shadowy idea of as fair a picture as the world can show."—A Winter with the Swallows.

"And when the sun rises full upon her, painting her with those vermilion tints which every morning reach her straight from Mecca, one might fancy her to have risen during the night, from an enormous block of pure white marble veined with rose-colour."-Une Année dans le Sahel. Fromentin.

This is the first sight of Algiers, as described by one who saw her from the deck of a pirate ship in which he had been captured:

"Algiers, forming an extensive semicircle of hills rising in amphitheatric beauty round the city, and many of them studded with country houses, is exceedingly picturesque as seen from the sea, while the numerous vineyards, orange and olive groves which surround the town, showing great marks of industry and cultivation, do not bear much analogy to the fierce character and vagrant lives of these African tyrants."-Pananti's Narration of a Residence in Algiers, 1814.

"This place, Algiers the warlike, which for several centuries has braved the greatest powers of Christendom, is not more than a mile and a half in circumference. It is situated up the declivity of a hill that rises north and north-east, whereby the houses rise so gradually above each other, that there is scarce one but what in one or other of these directions, has a full prospect of the sea."—Dr. Shaw's Travels, 1720-30.

"The town has the appearance of a theatre, the houses rising in tiers one slightly raised above the other. Its form is quadrilateral, the buildings closely pressed together without gardens."—Voyages de M. de Breve, 1605.

'Algiers looks from the sea like the sail of a great ship," says one old traveller (Peyssonnel, 1725). Another, Desfontaines, writes in 1789

"This city, with its whitewashed houses rising in amphitheatric

order one above another, is extremely beautiful as you approach it by water. The charm, however, dissolves most effectually on entering the town, where there is nothing to excite admiration."

It is to be hoped that the modern traveller may not find his first impressions thus rudely dispelled, although it is hard to be forced to descend from the glory of southern sunrises, and the romance of rose-tinted Moorish palaces, to the excessively matter-of-fact business of landing luggage, and scrambling for rooms at hotels. But such are the necessities of our every-day unromantic life, which thrusts itself perpetually upon us, even in the midst of our sublimest visions.

No sooner does daylight appear, than the steamer is crowded round with a flotilla of small boats, manned by a motley crew of Arabs, Kabyles, Spaniards, and Maltese, waiting to convey the traveller from the vessel to the quay, whilst they struggle for places, and wrangle and vociferate in an undistinguishable jargon which is half Arabic and half Lingua franca, itself a hybrid patois grown from all the languages of modern Europe, but which more nearly resembles Italian than anything else.

The scene is, at least, an animated one, and the stalwart forms, dark faces, and picturesque dresses of the Arabs and Kabyles, add not a little to the general effect; but the traveller will possibly not be sorry, when he finds himself and his smaller impedimenta safely landed on the quay.

"It is not easy to meet with a more noisy, extortionate, and covetous set than these Europeanised Arabs, who are the first specimens the newly arrived traveller sees before he puts his foot on shore. Our steamer had scarcely dropped anchor when we were surrounded by boats filled with them. An indescribable scene of confusion followed. Vociferating in guttural Arabic and African French, a host of strange

looking Kabyles scrambled up the ladder. Pushed back by the gendarmes and pulled down by other invaders who were trying to ascend, only a few gained the deck. One of these, a long, lanky fellow, with baggy trousers, à la Turc, about his loins, and his gandoura a kind of nominal shirt, looking in this scanty plumage, with his shaven head, not unlike a native ostrich, seized our bags viva forza. We thought the Berber would have carried us off with our baggage, when a stout Nubian interposed his claim to the prey. All were quarrelling and fighting about us, whilst the row in the boats presented another phase of Arab life at home."-Algeria as It Is.

It is only fair to say that this rather presents a picture of the landing as it was some few years since in Algeria, than as it is at the present day, the debarkation being now somewhat better arranged and more orderly. But the only way to avoid extortion and abuse from both boatmen and porters is to be well up in the "tarif." The authorised charge for landing is 30 c. each person, and 20 c. each package.

With the larger luggage the passenger has not to concern himself, as that will be conveyed by the authorities to the Custom-house on the quay, where he will have to claim it on payment of a small due.

On the quay, carriages (1 fr.) and guides in plenty will be found waiting to bring him to the hotels, which are all very near to the quay, but the walk to them is a hot and fatiguing one, either by the incline or up the long flights of steps.

The charge for porterage is-to the lower town, in which all the hotels are situated, under 50 lbs. 25 c., over 50 lbs. 75 c.; to the higher town-under 50 lbs. 30 c., over 50 lbs. I fr.

HOTELS.-There is a great want of a really first-class hotel in Algiers, such as may be met with in other winter