Algiers (First Edition)

Author: M. Elizabeth Crouse
Publisher: James Pott & Company, 1906
Condition: Hardcover, no dust jacket, minor wear and tear to cover, interior clean

From the preface:

"The book is an attempt to express a first impression of the Orient, obtained during five months in Algiers. Since the notes were taken, the writer has been in Tunis, and has spent a winter in Egypt. In neither, it seems to her, does the Oriental life compare with that in Algeria, both for grace and beauty. Much, however, of that first impression has been made clear and understandable by comparison with Egypt and further study there, while the feeling most strengthened is that the book itself or some book on Algiers is called for.

The country is less generally familiar than other parts of the North African coast. Morocco has been written of-what could be so charming as De Amicis' record? Egypt has been often described and has been visited by those who have seen no other Eastern land. But Morocco-and it may be added, Tunis shows much which is repellant to us; and Egypt, while possessing the ancient interest, is not all the Orient, nor the best of it. The costumes of Tunis do not compare with those of Algiers. And the rich coloring of Egypt which combines so well with its yellow Sands; the dark woodwork of the houses; the costumes, dark and less distinctive ; the bronze faces of the Egyptian inhabitants; the burliness of the Tartar Turks; seem all less fine than the white Algerian buildings in the dense foliage, the white and distinctive costume, the white faces of Algiers. The writer rejoices now that her first experience of the Orient was had in the last named city. There from the midst of every Western comfort, in surroundings of poetic beauty the Moorish villas and gardens now belonging to Europeans with all that is repulsive to Westerners in the Oriental life hidden from our eyes, we saw the white Orient in its most ideal aspect, its spiritual meaning.

Yet the political situation which revealed this Orient to us, may be its destruction ere long. Algiers is the already conquered center from which the French nation would spread our Western civilization into Tunis and Morocco. And this is the fact which gives Algeria a peculiar interest for the world today."