Turks in the seventeenth century after an unsuccessful attack on the Kabyle stronghold of Koukou. When the dey yielded to the French he conveyed what he was unable to deliver, and the conquest of the country has been going on ever since. This process of subjugation is anything but steady. The years of tranquillity outnumber those of disturbance, and that disproportion, already very great, may be said to be increasing. In the long intervals of peace everything goes on smoothly. The natives busy themselves in their fields and their simple workshops, content with the occasional effervescence of a town-quarrel. The exports of the province mount up rapidly. France felicitates herself on the brilliant success of her experiment, sends over small groups of immigrants and occupies herself with projects of vast prospective value. Paper railways permeate the gorges of the Djurjura Mountains, and paper canals lead the waters of the Mediterranean into the desert basin beyond. She repairs some of the Roman aqueducts, builds wooden bridges, keeps at bay the purely predatory tribes of the interior, and protects industry as certainly it never was protected under the Turks. She manifests a sincere wish to make the tri-color a blessing to Africa, and with time and no disaster at home bids fair to succeed.

KABYLE ARMORERS AT WORK.

Were she to be driven out to-day, the traces of her beneficent sway would be more marked than those left by her predecessors, or by their predecessors the Vandals. They could not possibly be less so. The mission of both these was fruitful chiefly of disorder and devastation. Compared with them, the natives whom they ruled against incessant protest were the representatives of civilization. The Arabs built a few forts on the beach to shelter piracy. What the Vandals left were burnt and overthrown walls, the memory of some religious riots, and a small library of pious polemics. Between them, they held the country for fifteen centuries: the Romans had it for four. All the moles and artificial forts, numerous and often massive; all the aqueducts, some of them spanning ravines three hundred feet deep, and others stretching for many leagues; all the cities, tombs and temples, of which the remains are scattered from the sea to the peaks,—everything, in fact, which shows that this was once a domain of art and intellect and culture, is Roman. Roman sepulchres look down upon the central French cantonment; Roman coins and gems are thrown out by the zouave, who works with the pick in one hand and the rifle in the other; and the squared stones and round columns of Roman temples are built into the huts of the people and the forts of their present rulers.

This superiority of the ancient methods of colonization, as attested by results, cannot be explained by any advantage in the arts of war comparable to that now enjoyed by the invading nation. Gunpowder did not exist to cast the balance. The success attained must be ascribed to a deeper knowledge of the arts of peace, and especially those of government. Surely the nineteenth century ought to be able to discover the secret.

Their suspicions once allayed, and apprehensions of purposes of mere military encroachment and new oppression removed, the Kabyles are very ready to forward the construction of works of public utility, and respond with alacrity to calls for labor. The mountain-streams, nearly dry for great part of the year, are at times swelled by destructive floods which carry down great boulders and trunks of trees. For want of bridges, access to the open-air markets which are held at places and periods fixed by long usage is thus liable to be prevented.

One of the most largely attended of these markets is held on the right bank of the small river Djemaa at a point about midway between Fort National on the north and the summit of the Djurjura on the south, three or four leagues from either. The crowd of buyers and sellers, most of them belonging to both classes, reaches as many as four thousand. The freshets of the Djemaa becoming yearly more of an impediment to travel, the tribe of the Beni-Menguellet, upon whose territory the fair is held, became fearful of the loss of its commercial advantages, which were largely dependent on the visits of the tribes on the left bank. They consequently proposed the building of a bridge, and offered to furnish men and materials to be used under French direction. A section of sappers commanded by a lieutenant soon finished the work with the aid promised. The Kabyles showed great skill in the handling of their rude tools. With their small axes they felled large trees so rapidly as to astonish the French. The felling, however, was a minor part of the task. The heavy beams had to be carried from the bottom of the steep ravine up goat-paths to the level of the bridge. This was done in the old Egyptian way, by sheer multiplication of hands, with no aid from the mechanical forces. A number of men took hold of each beam and of hand-spikes passed under it where the track was wide enough, and others drew by ropes. The slow and solemn procession, enlivening its way with equally solemn chants in the deepest of gutturals, climbed the precipice on the slow but sure principle. The bridge was a success, the threatened diversion of trade escaped, and Beni-Menguellet stock stood at a higher quotation than ever. A squad of sappers, not a mouthful in a military sense for the hundreds of Kabyles they supervised, had done more to win the loyalty of the natives than a brigade of beaux sabreurs or cave-smokers could have accomplished. The hammer rather than the musket is the weapon of subjugation.

FORT NATIONAL.

ROMAN TOMB, NEAR FORT NATIONAL.

At these markets Kabylia sits to the foreigner for her picture. How she lives, what she produces and what she wants is plainly and picturesquely stated. The inevitable Jew, in beard and gaberdine, brings from the city his pack of trinkets and gay stuff, with bales of heavier tissues for the excessively simple work-day robes of the Kabyle. The rich plain of Oued Sahel sends its wheat and barley to exchange for the products of the hill-loving olive-orchard and fig-plantation. The Beni-Janni, chiefs of the metal-workers, sit surrounded by enticing rows of swords, daggers, guns, armlets, leglets, silver and copper-gilt head-dresses and brooches. Vases in clay, ornamental and plain in every gradation, are the specialty of the Beni-Aissi. The Beni-bou-Yousef are the weavers, famous for many-colored haïks and burnouses, leaving to the Beni-Abbes a repute for similar garments of a particular striped fabric. Horses of the Barb type, small but elegant in figure, come from all quarters; but mules, which are offered in considerable number, are something of a monopoly with the Beni-Ouassif, the Kentuckians of Kabylia. Women, indifferent as to tribe, and indifferent also, it is sad to state, in appearance, being mostly over age, spread stores of butter, honey, eggs, fruit, lean poultry and herbs. The young ladies, there as in other parts of the world, come not to sell, but to shop. Things of Paris are not wanting to encourage this