Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/403

 THE EUBOPEAN SETTLERS. 82S In recent years the vine ba« chiffl y engaged the attention of the pcawntry. Vineyards have been laid out throughout the Tell and even on the u])land plateaux, and this industry has even been taken in hand by tho Mohammedans, notwith- standing tlie precepts of the Koran. In 1885 the vintage exceeded fortv-five million gallons, so that after tho great wine-growing countries, such &h P'ranoe, S|Miin, Italy, and Hungary, Algeria ranks amongst those in which viniculture has acquired the greatest development. Some of the vintages, amongst others thoae of Miliana, are highly esteemed, and even in the last century Shaw compared the flavour of the wine gn>wn in the Algiers district to that of Hermitage. I^rge companies have been formed to clear the land and create vineyards many thousand acres in extent. But alarm has been caused by the appearance of phylloxera, in 1885, at Mansura, near Tlemccn, and afterwards in the Sidi-bel-Abbes district. A more formidable scourge of long standing are the locusts, which are hatched in countless myriads on the steppes, where they are salted down and consumed as food by the nomads. A flight of moderate size observed in the Medea district in 1874, formed a compact mass 15 by 2^ miles, or 40 square miles in extent, comprising at least fifty billions of these winged pests. The invasion of 1866, which caused a direct loss of about £2,000,000, was followed next year by a frightful famine, during which probably five hundred thousand natives ]X'rished of hunger and want. Since then successful attempts have been made to localise the evil by means of metallic plates disposed in such a way as to present an effective barrier to the advance of the migratory species (ncrif/wm migraionam). The winged variety does little harm, being mostly blown seawards, as happened in 1865, when the dead bodies washed ashore lined the beach to a depth of from 10 to 12 feet. Of domestic animals, the most noteworthy is the famous Barbary horse, bred in the nomad encampments on the upland plateaux. According to the census of 1881, about five-sixths of the Algerian horses were still owned by the natives, who possess even a larger share of the mules and asses, and almost all the camels. To the Arabs further belong most of the homed cattle, sheep, and goats ; and Tiaret, the chief market for live stock in Algeria, lies in Arab territorv'. On the other hand, nearly all the swine are owned by the European settlers, although some of the Kabylcs breed this animal, regarded as •' impure " by all true believers. The live stock was greatly reduced by the scarcity of fodder in 1882, when the Arabs lost over a million of animals. The European Settlers. Like most other European colonies, Algeria can scarcely be said to have any peasant closs, properly so called. The European rural population, which represents about half of the immigrants, is mainly of urban origin ; hence is produced a phenomenon the very reverse of what is observeil in France. In the mother country the towns are inhabito<l by people from tho country ; in Algeria the country is settled by townsfolk. Relatively speaking, the Algerian farms are