Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/17



Cities of the Barbary Coast

In the picture-book of Africa there are few pages more attractive than those devoted to Algeria—formerly the greatest of the pirate states of Barbary, to-day the chief colonial possession of the French republic.

A hundred years ago a visit to the Barbary Coast was an experience not to be desired by voyagers from Christian lands, who then came not as tourists with cameras and guide-*books but as prisoners or slaves in manacles and chains.

Cities white in outward seeming but black in rascality and crime, then graced and at the same time disgraced the smiling southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.