1848 to 1852, when the late emperor made an early use of his imperial power to set him at liberty.  Since his freedom, at Constantinople, Broussa and Damascus the ex-sultan has continued to practice the rigors and holiness of the Oriental saint, proving his catholic spirit by protecting the Christians from Turkish injustice, and awaiting with the deep fatigue of a martyr the moment destined to unite his soul with the souls of Washington, Bozzaris and L’Ouverture.

This noble life, which impinges a moment on our course through Kabylia, is surely the most epical of our century, which can never be reproached for the lack of a hero while Abd-el-Kader’s name is remembered.

[Illustration:  DEFILE OF THIFILKOULT.]

The descent from the rock-perched city of Kalaa having been made in safety, and the animals being remounted at the first plateau, our Roumi traveler and his guides arrive in a few hours at the modern, fortified, but altogether Kabylian stronghold of Akbou.  Here a letter from a French personage of importance gives us the acquaintance of a Kabyle family of the highest rank.

The ancestors of Ben-Ali-Cherif, remotely descended from Mohammed through one of his sisters, were of Kabylian race, and one of them, settled in Chellata, near Akbou, founded there a prosperous college of the Oriental style.  Ben-Ali-Cherif, born in Chellata and residing at Akbou, receives the tourist with a natural icy dignity which only a czar among the sovereigns of Europe could hope to equal:  those who have but seen Arabs of inferior class can form no notion of the distinction and lofty gravity of the chiefs of a grand house (or of a grand tent, as they are called):  the Kabyle noble is quite as superb as the Arab.

Ben-Ali seats us at a rich table covered with viands half French and half Oriental:  a beautiful youth, his son, resembling a girl with his blue head-drapery and slim white hands, places himself at table, and attracts the conversation of the guest.  The young man answers in monosyllables and with his large eyes downcast, and the agha significantly observes, “You will excuse him if he does not answer:  he is not used to talk before his father.”

The host, disposing of the time of his guests, has arranged a series of diversions.  The valley of the river Sahel is full of boars, and panthers and monkeys abound in the neighboring spurs of the Zouaouas.  While the Roumi are examining his orchards of oranges and pomegranates the agha’s courtyard fills with guests, magnificent sheikhs on Barbary horses, armed with inlaid guns.  These are all entertained for the night, together with the usual throng of parasites, who choke his doors like the clients of the rich Roman in Horace.

At sunrise the party is mounted.  The mare of the agha, a graceful creature whose veins form an embroidery over her coat of black satin, is caparisoned with a slender crimson bridle, and a saddle smaller than the Arab saddles and furnished with lighter stirrups.  The Christian guests are furnished with veritable arquebuses of the Middle Ages; that is to say, with Kabyle guns, the stock of which, flattened and surmounted with a hammer of flints, is ignited by a wheel-shaped lock, easier to be managed by a Burgundian under Charles the Bold than by an unpretending modern Roumi.