of the illustrious prisoner Cervantes. "Our
spirits failed" (he writes) "in witnessing the unheard-of cruelties that
Hassan exercised. Every day were new punishments, accompanied with cries
of cursing and vengeance. Almost daily a captive was thrown upon the
hooks, impaled or deprived of sight, and that without any other motive
than to gratify the thirst of human blood natural to this monster, and
which inspired even the executioners with horror."

While our fancy traces the figure of the author of _Don Quixote_, a
plotting captive, behind the walls of Algiers, the steamer is
withdrawing, and the view of the city becomes more beautiful at every
turn of the paddles. We pass through a whole squadron of fishing-boats,
hovering on their long lateen sails, and seeming like butterflies
balanced upon the waves, which are blue as the petal of the iris.
Algiers gradually becomes a mere impression of light. The details have
been effaced little by little, and melted into a general hue of gold and
warmth: the windowless houses and the walls extending in terraces
confuse interchangeably their blank masses. The dark green hills of
Boudjareah and Mustapha seem to have opened their sombre flanks to
disclose a marble-quarry: the city, piled up with pale and blocklike
forms, appears to sink into the mountains again as the boat retires,
although the picturesque buildings of the Casbah, cropping out upon the
summit, linger long in sight, like rocks of lime. As we pass Cape
Matifou we see rising over its shoulder the summits of the Atlas range,
among whose peaks we hope to be in a fortnight, after passing Bona,
Philippeville and Constantina.

Sailing along this coast of the Mediterranean resembles an excursion on
one of the Swiss lakes. Four hours after passing Algiers, in going
eastwardly toward the port of Philippeville, we come in sight of Dellys,
a little town of poor appearance, where the hussars of France first
learned the peculiarities of Kabyle fighting. This warfare was something
novel. In place of the old gusty sweeps of cavaliers on horseback,
falling on the French battalions or glancing around them in whirlwinds,
the soldiers had to extirpate the Kabyles hidden in the houses. It was
not fighting--it was ferreting. Each house in Dellys was a fort which
had to be taken by siege. Each garden concealed behind its palings the
"flower" of Kabyle chivalry, only to be uprooted by the bayonet. The
women fought with fury.

We follow ou