es.

This was a wild, tormented world, broken into a hundred sharp mountain
ridges which seemed to cut the sky, because between the high peaks and
the tangled skein of far-away villages surged foaming seas of cloud,
which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by
incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost
straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura range,
billowed ridges and ravines, ravines and ridges, each pointing pinnacle
or razor-shelf adorned with its coral-red hamlet, like a group of
poisonous fungi, or the barnacles on a ship's steep side. Such an
extraordinary landscape Stephen had never imagined, or seen except on a
Japanese fan; and it struck him that the scene actually did resemble
quaint prints picturing half-real, half-imaginary scenes in old Japan.

"What a country for war! What a country for defence!" he said to
himself, as Nevill's yellow car sped along the levels of narrow ridges
that gave, on either hand, vertical views far down to fertile valleys,
rushed into clouds of weeping rain, or out into regions of sunlight and
rainbows.

It was three o'clock when they reached Michelet, but they had not
stopped for luncheon, as both were in haste to find Mouni: and Mouni's
village was just beyond Michelet. Since Fort National, they had been in
the heart of Grand Kabylia; and Michelet was even more characteristic of
this strange mountain country, so different from transplanted Arabia
below.

Not an Arab lived here, in the long, straggling town, built on the crest
of a high ridge. Not a minaret tower pointed skyward. The Kabyle place
of worship had a roof of little more height or importance than those
that clustered round it. The men were in striped brown gandourahs of
camel's hair; the lovely unveiled women were wrapped in woollen foutahs
dyed red or yellow, blue or purple, and from their little ears heavy
rings dangled. The blue tattoo marks on their brown cheeks and
foreheads, which in forgotten times had been Christian crosses, gave
great value to their enormous, kohl-encircled eyes; and their teeth
were very white as they smiled boldly, yet proudly, at Stephen and
Nevill.

There was a flight of steps to mount from the car to the hotel, and as
the two men climbed the stairs they turned to look, across a profound
chasm, to the immense mass of the Djurdjura opposite Michelet's thin
ledge. From their point of view, it was like the Jungfrau,