Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873

A fact need not be a fixed fact to be a very positive one; and Kabylia, a region to whose outline no geographer could give precision, has long existed as the most uncomfortable reality in colonial France. Irreconcilable Kabylia, hovering as a sort of thunderous cloudland among the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, is respected for a capacity it has of rolling out storms of desperate warriors. These troops disgust and confound the French by making every hut and house a fortress: like the clansmen of Roderick Dhu, they lurk behind the bushes, animating each tree or shrub with a preposterous gun charged with a badly-moulded bullet. The Kabyle, when excited to battle, goes to his death as carelessly as to his breakfast: his saint or marabout has promised him an immediate heaven, without the critical formality of a judgment-day. He fights with more than feudal faithfulness and with undiverted tenacity. He is in his nature unconquerable. So that the French, though [Pg 250]they have riddled this thunder-cloud of a Kabylia with their shot, seamed it through and through with military roads, and established a beautiful fort national right in the middle of it, on the plateau of Souk-el-Arba, possess it to-day about as thoroughly as we Americans might possess a desirable thunder-storm which should be observed hanging over Washington, and which we should annex by means of electrical communications transpiercing it in every direction, and a resident governor fixed at the centre in a balloon. France has gorged Kabylia, with the rest of Algeria, but she has never digested it. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 22402
Author: Various
Release Date: Aug 26, 2007
Format: eBook
Language: English