Along the valley south of the Sahel runs the railroad that the French have built from east to west throughout their African dominion, and which may some day, if the dreams of a great French empire in the Dark Continent come true, be extended through the vast Sahara to Timbuctoo and the Niger. The existing line is a branch of the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranée system. From its terminus at Algiers it runs through lower Mustapha and past the Jardin d'Essai, skirting the sandy beach of the tideless Mediterranean. Beyond the heights of the Sahel it turns inland and bifurcates, branching eastward toward Constantine and Tunis, and westward toward Oran. Through the flowery meadows of Boufarik and the orange groves of Blidah this latter branch follows the stream of the Oued-el-Kebir, which despite its name of “Great River” is dried to a mere thread in summer. “Oued,” it may be noted, is the Gallicized form of the Arab word more familiar as “Wady.”

Algeria forms three departments—Algiers, Oran and Constantine—of the French republic. Its government and its laws are the same as those of France, with one interesting exception. While all inhabitants, European or native, are subject to the French criminal jurisdiction, precisely as if they were citizens of Paris or Marseilles, the Arabs, and they only, are allowed to regulate all civil matters by their own code, which is that of the Koran. They have their own courts for the settlement of all questions of marriage, divorce, and business transactions, the judges, or cadis, being members of their own race appointed by the French government.

The stranger who has, with reverently unshod feet, entered the mosque on the Place du Gouvernement, and then emerged, probably disappointed at the plainness of its whitewashed interior, should find his way to the Arab court room behind it. It is an unpretentious, small, and bare room; the cadi squats on cushions behind a table, with his adel, or clerk, beside him. Litigants and witnesses sit