FOUR MONTHS IN ALGERIA.

CHAPTER I.

THE Communication between the two continents of Europe and Africa is at the present time as easy and as regular as that between England and Belgium was twenty years ago. Twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays, excellent steamers belonging to the Messageries Impériales leave Marseilles for Algiers. Besides these, a steamer belonging to a private French company leaves each port every Thursday. These latter vessels are not quite so speedy as the packetboats, as they are built to carry merchandise, and consequently they enjoy less popularity with the travelling public. In one of them, however, I embarked on the 31st of December, 1857. The sky was clear, and the sea like a mill-pond; a balmy breeze, such as one is favoured with on a fine early September day in England, blew gently from the

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VOYAGE FROM MARSEILLES.

south-west, and the barometers predicted the continuance of calm weather. Under such circumstances, no one who has ever experienced sea-sickness will hesitate to choose a batiment de commerce just about to put to sea in preference to the prospect of a mail steamer forty-eight hours later. At one o'clock the Kabyle passed the Marseilles lighthouse, carrying twelve or fourteen deck and second cabin passengers, but only myself in the chief cabin. I was well content to accept the dulness of my solitary state in consideration of the comfort incident to being the sole candidate for a berth, although the fineness of the weather rendered the advantages of the position less conspicuous than might have been the case. The accommodation was in every respect quite as good as that on board the mail-boats, and the captain, an intelligent, courteous, and apparently skilful seaman, made our tête-à-tête dinners and breakfasts as pleasant as could be desired, and furnished me with several pieces of information which I found very useful when I first landed in Africa.

While watching the receding shore of Europe with that interest which exile, although only for a few months, invariably inspires, I was surprised by a phenomenon which at the instant appeared very strange, although a few minutes' reflection dispelled all astonishment. As the hills surrounding Marseilles disappeared, they were succeeded by what seemed to

at sea.

OPTICAL PHENOMENON.

.

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be high cliffs coming down to the water's edge. We were at the time some five and thirty miles from the land, and the appearance was not unlike that of the English cliffs when one is six or seven miles out I thought at first there must be some optical delusion, but on taking the bearings carefully, and referring to the map, the mystery was explained. The cliffs" were the high Alpine summits, covered with their eternal snows, distant from the deck of the steamer more than one hundred miles. From my point of view, the whole space really intervening between the sea horizon and these summits had vanished away, and they themselves appeared thrown forward, as it seemed, quite near. They continued, especially two of them, growing higher and higher, slightly illuminated, half an hour after the upper edge of the sun had sunk in the sea, and it was not till five o'clock that they altogether disappeared. Had the steamer left Marseilles an hour earlier, they would no doubt have been visible at even a greater distance. At nine o'clock on new year's morning we sighted Minorca, and during the day were passing through the channel which separates that island from Majorca. While about two leagues off the former, we were met by the packet from Algiers, the first vessel we had seen since quitting the shores of France, as the ordinary course of ships proceeding up or down the Mediterranean lies to the south of the Balearic islands.