CLIMATE OF ALGIERS.

9

a list of lodgings to be let, and so do some of the shopkeepers in the town; but a good deal of caution is requisite before engaging anything, especially if the hirer has a lady in his party.

There is usually a great deal of rain at Algiers during the months of November, December, January, and February; in the present year the two latter months followed the ordinary rule. In January there were sixteen, and in February seventeen days upon which rain fell. But of these there were very few in which it was not possible to take exercise out of doors for a considerable time. A storm generally gives some notice of its approach if the barometer is consulted. I never found the aneroid which I used-one constructed by Lerebour and Secretan of Paris-fail to give me warning, although it did once or twice raise a false alarm. It was my habit to observe it, and the dry and wet bulbs of a psychrometric thermometer by the same manufacturers, four times a day, at 8 A.M. and 2, 6, and 11 P.M.; and I soon became enough of a weather-prophet to take long walks and rides in the neighbourhood without ever getting more than one wetting, which after all I should have escaped had I not unfortunately had a sluggish horse, and forgotten to put on spurs on leaving home. There is very little of the drizzling wet weather to which we are accustomed in England. The rain, when it falls at all, falls in pailfuls, ploughing deep furrows

10

MILDNESS OF WINTER.

in the soft friable stone of the steep hills which surround Algiers, and washing away the unmetalled roads which wind up them. On a level, the immediate result is the production of a deep soft mud, in which one sinks above the ankles. But a very few hours of sun dry up the soil, and a day or two converts the mud to dust. Between the periods of storm rains, too, there is generally an interval of two or three days of quite settled weather; and during these, excursions may be made to a distance of thirty or thirty-five miles even by a valetudinarian. Before the end of February I had crossed the Metidja in four different directions, and had traversed on foot or on horseback every portion of the Sahel,-the hilly country of the Littoral, which separates the Metidja from the sea. The temperature of the atmosphere was that of an English May or June. On most days I could sit writing or reading in my room with the window open without feeling in the least chilly, although there was no carpet, and nothing to keep my feet from the stuccoed floor but a small mat made of the halfa-grass. The greatest observed height of the thermometer in my apartment during the month of January was 62° Fahrenheit, the lowest 54°, and the greatest variation in any one day only 7°. This occurred on the 5th of the month; and on no other day did the variation amount to 5°. In February the greatest observed height was 66°, the lowest 56°, and

the maximum variation in any one day less than 31°. The most generally prevailing wind was that from the north-west, which is invariably mild and refreshing as regards its temperature, although sometimes too violent for a decided invalid. The only days which I found formidable were those in which the wind blew from a southern quarter, after much moisture had been precipitated. This, which had descended on the Sahel in the form of rain, fell on the high plateaux of the Atlas in that of snow, and the blast from the south passing over the latter struck most piercingly whenever an ascent of the Sahel brought one within its range. The greatest peril which an invalid has to encounter during an Algerian winter undoubtedly arises from this cause. The snow on the high plains. does not melt in general till the month of March; and while it remains, it is extremely inexpedient for him to remove from the shelter which the Sahel affords, unless he sees a good steady breeze setting from the northwards. As the hills come close down to the sea, there is on fine days a constant temptation to be imprudent in this respect; and the better the health of the patient, the more does he repine at being confined in taking his exercise to a single road, which is in fact all that is compatible with safety under such circumstances. Indeed my own experience would lead me to prefer Oran, the chief town of the western province, to Algiers, as a domicile for the winter.

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ADVANTAGES OF ORAN.

Much less rain falls there; and the plateaux inland are not only considerably lower than in the meridian of Algiers, but further removed from the coast. The pedestrian can get away from the town without the exertion of climbing a steep ascent of seven or eight hundred feet; and although the surrounding country is inferior in beauty to the immediate neighbourhood of Algiers, it possesses perhaps greater interest for the botanist and geologist, and is particularly well adapted for horse-exercise.

TOWN OF ALGIERS.

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CHAPTER II.

THE lower part of Algiers has been almost entirely rebuilt since the French occupation; and the introduction of European architecture has not been favourable to picturesque effect. The Place Royale may be considered as the centre of the modern town. Two streets, the Rue Bab-el-Oued (Water Gate) and the Rue Bab-Azoun (Gate of Grief), lead out of it, the former in a northerly the latter in a southerly direction, to the site of the gates from which they took their names. They are composed of houses four or five stories in height, built over arcades. This is the case also with the Rue de la Marine, by which all travellers arriving by sea are obliged to pass. In some few instances the Moorish buildings have been retained in this locality, but in most cases their entire destruction was requisite in order to carry out the line of street according to the French notions of architectural propriety; and those which were suffered to remain have been more or less altered. The great mosque (Djemmâa Kebir) which stands in the Rue de la