Let us quote a sketch of the region lying a few leagues west and north-west of Bougie: 

“Near Tarourt we found thermal springs.  An open park-like country, beautiful with trees and turf, is defaced only by charred spots where the cork-woods have been burned by the natives to effect clearings much less in extent than the space thus denuded.  Ten acres of cork trees will be thoughtlessly burned to make one of fig-orchard.  And this evil rather increases than lessens, prevention being difficult by reason of the want of good roads for reaching the delinquents....  In six hours’ march we reached Toudja, at the foot of Mount Arbalon, in the most delicious oasis imaginable.  The soil, threaded by clear and cool rivulets which spring in abundance from the rocks forming the base of the mountain, is wonderfully fertile.  We are surrounded by more than a square league of tufted verdure, composed in great part of orange and lemon groves, mingled with some palms and immense carob trees.  The houses are well built, and even show fancy in their designs.  Vines bending with enormous clusters of grapes festoon themselves from tree to tree, tasselling the topmost branches with fruit and tendrils.  It is not uncommon to see four or five large trees taken possession of by a single vine, its trunk as large as the body of a man.  The grapes are mostly of a light-red color, large and sweet.”

[Illustration:  REPOSE.]

All this indicates that France did not deceive herself as to the capabilities of Algeria, and that her conquest of it was inspired by considerations more solid than the glory she has been accused of recognizing as an all-sufficient motive.  She has made the country much more valuable to the commerce of the world than any other part of Barbary.  Had she done nothing more with it than hold it prostrate and put an end to its existence as a den of pirates, she would by that alone have earned the gratitude of the nations.  She has done a great deal more.  European civilization has discovered a penetrable spot in the dense armor of African barbarism.  It has effected a lodgment in the darkest and most hopeless of the continents.  Should the movement fail, like so many before it, to extend itself, and become localized after a period of promise, the cause must be sought mainly in natural obstacles almost impossible to be overcome.

To have lifted the dead, brutal weight of Ottoman tyranny from any corner of the broad territory it blasts is to deserve well of humanity.  Still stronger is the case when the rescued territory is fertile, beautiful, and inhabited by a race worthy of a better fate than the bondage against which it had never ceased to struggle.

France has not been guiltless of acts of severity, always attendant, in a greater or less degree, on violent political changes.  It is not doubtful, nevertheless, that by repressing the endless turbulence of the tribes and driving out a foreign rule that knew no law but force, she has saved many more lives than she has taken.  A genius for organization was never denied her.  Organization was the first thing wanted in Algeria.