imitation of a French provincial town, we concede only so much to its
modern character as to hire a fine open carriage in which to proceed
inland toward Constantina. This city is reached after a calm, meditative
ride through sunny hills and groves. After so quiet a preparation the
first view of Constantina is fairly astounding. Encircled by a grand
curve of mountainous precipices, rises a gigantic rock, washed by a moat
formed of the roaring cascades of the river Rummel. On the flat top of
this naked rock, like the Stylites on his pillar, stands Constantina.
The Arabs used to say that Constantina was a stone in the midst of a
flood, and that, according to their Prophet, it would require as many
Franks to raise that stone as it would of ants to lift an egg at the
bottom of a milk-pot.

[Illustration: CONSTANTINA.]

This city, under its old Roman name of Cirta, was one of the principal
strongholds of Numidia. In 1837 it was one of the most hotly-defended
strongholds of the Kabyles. The French have renamed, as "Gate of the
Breach," the old Bab-el-Djedid, where Colonel Lamoriciere entered at the
head of his Zouaves. The city had to be conquered in detail, house by
house. Lamoriciere himself was wounded: the Kabyles, driven to their
last extremity, evacuated the Casbah on the summit of the rock, and let
down their women by ropes into the abyss; the ropes, overweighted by
these human clusters, broke, piling the bodies and fragments of bodies
in heaps beneath the precipice, while some of the natives descended the
steep rock safely with the agility of goats.

Of all the large Algerian cities, Constantina is that which has best
preserved its primitive signet. In most quarters it remains what it was
under the Turks. These quarters are still undermined, rather than laid
out, with close and crooked streets, where the rough white houses are
pierced with narrow windows, closed to the inquisitive eye of the Roumi.
The roofs are of tile, for the winters on the hills are too severe to
permit the flat, terraced roofs of Algiers or Bona. These white houses,
roofed with brown, give a perfectly original aspect to the city as seen
from any of the neighboring eminences. The plateau of Mansourah is
connected with the town by a magnificent Roman bridge, two stories in
height, restored by the French.

[Illustration: ROMAN BRIDGE AT CONSTANTINA.]

From this bridge, which is three hundred feet high by three hundred and
fifteen feet in length,