The inhabitants of
Barbary do not like a wild life, they are extremely fond of what
civilization can give them, such as _creme de menthe_, rifles, good
waterworks, maps, and railways: only they would like to have these
things without the bother of strict laws and of the police, and so
forth. Travel in Barbary with seeing eyes and you find out all this new
truth.
Now it took the French forty years and more before each of these plain
facts (and I have only cited half a dozen out of as many hundred) got
into their letters and their print: they have not yet got into the
letters and the print of other nations. But an honest man travelling in
Barbary on his own account would pick up every one of these truths in
two or three days, except the one about the lions; to pick up that truth
you must go to the very edge of the country, for the lion is a shy beast
and withdraws from men.
The wise man who really wants to see things as they are and to
understand them, does not say: "Here I am on the burning soil of
Africa." He says: "Here I am stuck in a snowdrift and the train twelve
hours late"--as it was (with me in it) near Setif in January, 1905. He
does not say as he looks on the peasant at his plough outside Batna:
"Observe yon Semite!" He says: "That man's face is exactly like the face
of a dark Sussex peasant, only a little leaner." He does not say: "See
those wild sons of the desert! How they must hate the new artificial
world around them!" Contrariwise, he says: "See those four Mohammedans
playing cards with a French pack of cards and drinking liqueurs in the
cafe! See, they have ordered more liqueurs!" He does not say: "How
strange and terrible a thing the railway must be to them!" He says: "I
wish I was rich enough to travel first, for the natives pouring in and
out of this third-class carriage, jabbering like monkeys, and treading
on my feet, disturb my tranquillity.
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