Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/57

 fast their ships to the breakwater, and proceeded in a cool, dogged, British fashion to demolish Algiers. At the first broadside five hundred people were struck down in the streets; and when Lord Exmouth sailed away, one half the houses in the city were in ruins, and the entire pirate navy was destroyed. From that day Christian slavery ceased to exist. The Christian nations regained their self-respect. But the scourge of Christendom was only scotched not killed. The death-blow was withheld for fourteen years. The hand of France had long been raised to strike it, when at last, in 1830, on the 13th of June, the ruling dey of Algiers, losing his temper, tapped the French consul insolently in the face and brought down upon himself and all his rascally crew a counter-blow, struck by a sea and land force of over forty thousand Frenchmen,—a blow that crushed forever this nest of piracy and gave to the conquering nation a beautiful city and a province half as large as France. This blow was struck, appropriately, on the 4th day of July.

THE HOTEL SPLENDIDE

Since then the French have been performing miracles of progress, and to-day Algiers stands as the chief city of the French colonial world. It is also one of the most popular of the many winter resorts bordering