Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/244

 200 NORTH- WEST AFRICA. sudden invasion, the situation of the Arabs has not grown worse, while that of the Kubyles, Biskri, and Mzabites has even improved, thanks to the stimulus given to their trade industries. Algeria has received much more from France than she has returned, and the people of the country, though not treated as equals, have in many resjxjcts gained more liberty since the period of Turkish rule. Many of the Euroixjan settlers themselves have endeavoured to vindicate their right to fellow- citizenship with the Arabs and Kabyles by their industrious habits and perseverance in founding new homes under the most adverse circumstances, in the midst of fanatical and hostile populations. Thanks to their indomitable energy and patience, the land may be said to have been subdued far more by the plough than by the sword. In this peaceful, though none the less arduous, conquest of the soil, the non- French colonists took at first the largest share, and even still scarcely yield to the French settlers in agricultaial enterprise. With the Provencals, and others from the south of France, they have helped to solve the vexed question of the acclimatisa- tion of Europeans in the Barbary States. Immigrants from the north of France and Central Europe are less capable of resisting the unfavourable climatic influences, and amongst them the mortality is normally higher than the birth-rate. If the settlements were recruited exclusively from those sources, the work of colonisation would have to be incessantly renewed. But the Catalonians, Pro- vencals, Genoese, and other southern peoples find little inconvenience in migrating to the regions south of the Mediterranean, where they still meet the same flora and fauna, and in some respects even the same ethnical elements, as in their native land. As in the time of the Iberians and Ligurians, kindred races continue to settle on the north coast of Africa, where the difference of latitude is largely compensated by the greater elevation of the land. The work of assimilation is thus being effected by the Mediterranean races, and to them will mainly be due the development of the New Algeria, with its cities, highways, industries, and general European culture. At the same time the work of civilisation has hitherto been carried out in a desultory and perfunctory manner. The country might even have been aban- doned altogether, if the monarchy, threatened in the streets of Paris by the Republicans, had not found it convenient to get rid of its enemies by banishing them to the Algerian border-lands. Even before the July revolution, the conquest of Algeria seemed to offer a career for these unruly elements, and in the year 1831, the Government succeeded in enlisting as "volunteers" for this service some four thousand five hundred Parisian malcontents. Thus the new conquest became a place of exile before it developed into a colonial settlement. The conquest itself continued to tax the resources of the mother country, and its settlement has already cost at least £240,000,000, besides the lives of several hundred thousand soldiers and colonists. It may even be asked whether this constant drain of men and treasure may not have been the primary cause of the late disastrous war with Germany, followed by a rectification of frontier to the advantage of that Power.