ces of Oran
and Tittery and the plains of the Northern Sahara had been won by his
military prowess.

A still nobler triumph in the exhibition of moral power was beheld in
his dealings with the region called Great Kabylia, the superb range of
the Djurjura Mountains extending eastward from Algiers. The hardy
Kabyles of that territory had remained unsubdued amid the changing
governments which had risen and fallen around them. As independent
little republics, bound together by the most exalted spirit of freedom,
they had ever preserved their usages, customs, and laws. In September,
1839, Abd-el-Kader, attended by only fifty horsemen, suddenly appeared
among them. Thousands gathered around his tent from the valleys and
fastnesses. He addressed them in a stirring and argumentative harangue,
pointing out union under his standard as the only safeguard against
French conquest. With loud shouts they accepted his faithful caliph, Ben
Salem, as their chief in war, and agreed to pay the regular imposts and
to go forth to the Djehad. For thirty days the Sultan made a progress
through the country, everywhere received with joy and enthusiasm as a
venerated _hadji_ and marabout, as a teacher of the law, as a man of
pious life, as a renowned warrior and an eloquent preacher. We cannot
dwell here on his educational and moral reforms, his earnest efforts to
enforce the teaching of the _Koran_, which was his guide in his public
and private life. His beneficent intentions were all to be frustrated by
the ambition of a European nation which was to signally fail, not in the
work of conquering Abd-el-Kader, but in turning her conquest to good
account.

Hastily drawn treaties are a prolific source of war. The Treaty of the
Tafna was a flagrant example of this class of diplomatic documents.
There were two drafts: one in Arabic, with the Sultan's seal; the other
in French, with Bugeaud's. The drafts were not carefully compared. The
limits of territory assigned to each of the parties were not made clear.
One instance of the lack of identity in the two forms of the instrument
will suffice. The French form declared that Abd-el-Kader acknowledged
the sovereignty of France. The Sultan had never dreamed of making an
admission which, in its effect on the tribes, would have cost him his
throne. What he had written, in Arabic, in the article which he
subscribed, was, properly translated, "The Emir Abd-el-Kader
acknowledges that there is a French Sultan,