Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/84

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inhabited by about three hundred French civilians and a large garrison. It was the evening before Easter that I arrived at this Hôtel des Touristes, having ascended from the valleys in a stage-coach so crowded that the only place available for me was in an Arab's lap.

EASTER GREETINGS

Easter Sunday dawned gloriously fair, and at an early hour we mounted our mules for an expedition or rather a plunge into Kabylia. Where could we have found a more inspiring temple in which to worship that Easter morning? What grander altar than the snow-capped chain of the Djurdjura Atlas, that like a reredos of gleaming marble lifts its imposing mass against the azure dome of heaven! Morning vapors rise like clouds of incense to envelop it. Like a great choir-screen, a range of lesser mountains—dark and green—is extended between us and that inviolable altar. Upon their crests we may discern in delicate relief the five superbly situated villages of the famous Kabyle tribe, the Beni Yenni. The object of our day's excursion is to reach those distant crests, and to attain them we must plunge into the depths of the intervening valleys, and, crossing a turbulent river, climb the precipitous flank