Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/290

 286 NOETH-WEST AFEICA. bv former wars, piracy, slavery, polygamy. Thus have been thrown together Berbers, Syrians, Circassians, Albanians, Spaniards, Balearic Islanders, Italians, Provencals, Haussas, Bambaras, Fulahs, and even groups of Gipsies (Gsani, Guezz&ni), who arrived contemporaneously with the Andalusian Moors expelled from Spain. The Kulugli (Kur-Ogli), the offspring of Turks and native women, were also formerly very numerous in the coast towns and in certain inland villages; but these half-castes have already been almost entirely absorbed in the general Mussulman population of the towns. The Negroes, Jews, and Europeans. A large strain of Negro blood may everywhere be recognised among the inhabitants of Algeria, and whole tribes even among the highland Kabyles betray clear proofs of crossing between the aborigines of the seaboard and the Sudanese Negroes. Perhaps more than one-half of the Algerians who pass for Arabs or Berbers are of mixed descent ; but pure Negroes are now rarely met, owing to the almost complete interruption of direct intercourse across the Sahara between the Mediterranean seaboard and Western Sudan. Hence, since the suppression of the slave trade in 1848, the local Nigritian elements are gradually disappearing, while the children of free immigrants from Sudan seldom survive. The Negroes settled in Algeria are all distinguished by their love of work, finding employ- ment chiefly as agricultural labourers, stone-breakers, watchmen, or domestic servants. The Jews, far less numerous in Algeria than in Marocco, form nevertheless an important element of the population, owing to their spirit of solidarity, their money-making instincts, and the part they take as French citizens in the political administration of the country. The European immigrants, constituting a seventh part of the whole population, have already become the predominant race in Algeria. Thanks to their higher culture, combined with the exercise of political power, they naturally occupy all the chief civil and military positions, and hence- forth control the destinies of the country. The French have resumed the work of the old Roman rulers, but under conditions greatly modified by the progress of events. Except in Western Europe and in Mauritania, where it reached the ocean, the Roman world was hemmed in on all sides by unknown regions and hostile populations ; foreign pressure was constantly felt on the frontiers, and the political equilibriimi was at last overthrown by the migration of the barbarians. Now the conditions are changed, and the modern European world, instead of being surrounded, everywhere encircles the less cultured populations, incessantly en- croaching on their domain, and transforming them by the introduction of new industries and new usages. If they do not become entirely assimilated, they must at least share in the same culture, and especially to the French colonists on the Mediterranean seaboard falls the lot of carrying on this conscious or unconscious work oi civilisation throughout the regions of North Africa. The results already achieved since 1830 are considerable ; from year to year the face of the land