Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/23

 THE HARBOR OF ALGIERS By Permission

travel. The voyage is delightful. A glimpse of the Azores, a smile from old Tangier, and a frown from Gibraltar as we pass the straits—then the blue calmness of the Mediterranean, and at last on the eleventh day a gracious sunny welcome from Algiers, the most beautiful city of North Africa. As our great ship slowly approaches the entrance to the harbor, there is unrolled before us a panorama of the city and the pretty suburbs perched on the slopes of neighboring hills. Far up to the right we see the church of "Our Lady of Africa." By slow degrees the city proper comes in view. Beyond the great stone breakwater we see a broad boulevard and the façades of elegant European structures, but behind this nineteenth-century mask rises the real Algiers, the Arab city, dazzling white, apparently cut from a block of spotless marble, while in reality its snowy brilliancy is due to