Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/36

 buildings of the European quarter; of these the Theater is most conspicuous. But this is not the real Algiers. The Arab city is behind and above all this. That cascade of white roofs that seems to come tumbling from the sky,—that is the real Algiers or at least what is left of it. The old city was called by the Arabs, "El Jazaïr," "the peninsulas," a name from which the French have derived the modern name of Algér, a name which we in turn have corrupted into Algiers, a word quite unfamiliar to the natives. Formerly that white flood of roofs and terraces descended to the shore, but it has been forced back, and every year the French build their modern dikes higher and higher on the slopes. The white city contracts; the dull-hued structures of civilization creep steadily up-hill, and will in time entirely blot out the native quarter or reduce it to the commonplace.

AN AFRICAN PARIS