CHAPTER XXIII.

BLIDAH.

"Wo die Citronen blühn

Im dunklen Laub die Gold-orangen glühn."

Goethe.

HOTELS.-Hôtel Geronde, in a good open situation, nearest the station. Very clean and comfortable, and most obliging landlord. Excellent food-dinner, 3 fr.

Hôtel d'Orient, on the "Place." Not quite so clean, but extremely good table.

Hôtel de France. Situation inferior, but rooms clean and food good. Charges very moderate.

Hotel omnibuses from the station; no charge. Fiacres, I fr. The station is about half a mile from the town.

LIDAH is a corruption of the Arab El-Boleida, the little town.

"Others call thee El-Boleida,

But I call thee Ourida" (the little rose),

sang the Arab poet. And in truth the situation of Blidah justifies all that has been said in its praise. Although the mountains at the foot of which it lies are not very lofty, being only snow-capped during the winter months, and the scenery which surrounds it, is for the most part, pleasing rather than striking, it possesses attractions which are usually found to be irresistible, not the least of which are the mul

titudinous orange and lemon groves in which it lies almost embedded, true gardens of the Hesperides, where fruit and flower-hope and its fruition--grow together on the tree, and where, amid the glory of colour and the sweetness of perfume, it is hard to say what sense is gratified the most highly.

Blidah is not more than twenty-eight miles from Algiers, and can be visited with its chief attractions in one day, the 6 A.M. or 8.15 A.M. train being taken from Algiers; but as the journey consumes nearly three hours each way, and as the last train from Blidah for Algiers leaves at 3.50 P.M., this will be found altogether an unsatisfactory way of visiting one of the prettiest spots in Algeria. And there are several good and sufficient reasons for making a stay of some days at least, at this town.

In the first place, the hotels, though unpretending, are very comfortable and moderate-the food strikingly better than at Algiers, as indeed seems to be the case in all the country towns, for what reason it would be difficult to say. Secondly, Blidah is an excellent centre for various excursions, either by railway, diligence, or carriage. Thirdly, the air of the place is particularly fresh and invigorating; and when Algiers becomes, as it does with advancing spring, hot and close, Blidah will be found in comparison, cool and refreshing. In the summer it is said to be as hot or even hotter than Algiers, which is tempered by the seabreezes, but in winter and spring its proximity to the mountains, which retain their snowy caps until about March, makes it colder than the sea-side city. It is, therefore, not advisable for persons in delicate health to visit it too early in the year. Fires will often be in request at Blidah, when

the heat is almost oppressive at Algiers. Added to which, the hotels are all built somewhat after the Eastern fashion, round the sides of a court, the rooms opening out into a balcony which runs round the quadrangle. The court is covered for the most part with a vine-trellis, and serves as a loungingplace, or in summer as a dining-room; but the style of building is more suitable to warm than to cold weather.

With regard to the history of Blidah, M. Piesse writes in his "Itinéraire "

“Blidah did not, in my opinion, like so many of the cities of Algeria, exist in the time of the Roman dominion; no trace, no ruin, leads us to suppose that it has an antique origin; and Shaw was surely mistaken in considering Blidah to have been the Roman Bida Colonia, which other writers have mentioned as succeeding to the town of Sufosar. In the history of the Berbers, by Ihn-Khaldoun, a city Metidja is cited as having been situated on the plain of the same name, in the position now occupied by Blidah; and El-Bekri (another Arab historian) imagines that Metidja was the same as Kazrouna, which was situated somewhat higher up the mountains than Blidah."

In the old geographer Marmol, we read—

"There are but few cities in this province that we can give any account of, for the ancient cities were demolished in their wars with the Arabians and with some private princes, and though the ruins of them are still visible in some places, yet we are at a loss to know so much as their name."

There can be no doubt that many prosperous ancient towns in this part of Africa, which escaped the ravages of the Vandals and Arabs, were in the thirteenth century razed by the savage desert-tribes, but there seems no reason for differing from M. Piesse's conclusion that "Blidah, the city of white and sparkling walls, smiled on by the sun in the midst of its luxuriant orange-groves, whose perfume reveals her from afar," possesses no claim to antiquity. Under the

Turkish rule, Blidah became a large and prosperous town, with a population of some twenty-five thousand souls, having commercial relations with Tittery (the country south of the lesser Atlas, of which Medeah was the capital), and constant communication with Algiers.

Dr. Shaw writes

"Bleeda and Medea, the only inland cities of this province, are each of them about a mile in circuit, but their walls, which are chiefly of mud, perforated all over by hornets, cannot much contribute to their strength or security. They are well watered, and have all around them very fruitful gardens and plantations. A branch of an adjacent rivulet may be conducted through every house and garden at Bleeda.”—Dr. Shaw's Travels.

Blidah does not seem, from this account, to have been made in any way a strong city. It was happy, for the most part, in having no history, and was essentially a town of pleasure, the summer resort of the rich and gay Algerians. Indeed, in its palmy days, at a time when public morals in the Barbary States were not likely to meet with very strict censure, it was known as "Blidah the wicked." So great was its depravity, that a celebrated marabout of the city, whose grave may still be seen in the Sacred Grove, preached like a second Jonah against its sins; and prophesied, so it is said, the destruction of the modern Nineveh.

The prophecy was fulfilled in the year 1825, when a terrible earthquake, which lasted for five days, from the 2nd to the 7th of March, laid the whole city in ruins, threw down houses, mosques and palaces, and buried no less than seven thousand persons in a living grave.

Curiously enough, the koubba of Sidi Mohammed ElBlida, the preacher of righteousness and the foreboder of evil, was spared from the general overthrow. The panic

stricken survivors of this catastrophe, at first determined to desert the spot which had proved so fatal, and began the building of a new town a little further to the north, but very shortly, as it seemed, they returned to their old haunts, unwilling to abandon a site which presented so many natural advantages.

When the French, five years after the earthquake, first entered Blidah, they found the town, although still showing traces of the calamity, rebuilt and populous.

The streets at this time, consisted entirely of one-storied whitewashed buildings, arranged after the native fashion, in narrow and tortuous lanes, across which extended trelliswork, overgrown with vines and creepers.

It was at Blidah, it will be remembered, that the French received their first check in Algeria, General de Bourmont finding on his return from an expedition to Medeah, that the troops he had confidently left in the town, had been attacked and cut to pieces, and being himself, with the main body of his army, glad to beat a retreat upon Algiers.

In the November of the same year, 1830, the inhabitants of Blidah, who, whatever their reputation for luxury in olden days, certainly proved themselves anything but cowardly, or wanting in manly virtue in the defence of their country, made a determined resistance to Marshal Clauzel, who had set himself the task of avenging the disaster of his predecessor.

Blidah was one of the towns which suffered from the rapacity and severity of the Duc de Rovigo, being given over to sack by his orders on the 20th of November, 1834.

It made common cause with Abd-el-Kader in his first war with the French, and was the scene of constant