white cities and oasis towns

University of Northern Iowa

White Cities and Oasis TownsAuthor(s): Frank SchoonmakerSource: The North American Review, Vol. 229, No. 2 (Feb., 1930), pp. 239-242Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25110957 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 19:56

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Northern Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The NorthAmerican Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.31 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 19:56:57 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uni

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25110957?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


White Cities and Oasis Towns

By Frank Schoonmaker

Cities of that brilliant rim of sunshine spanning North Africa which fascinate with their crenelated walls, fretted

gateways and lofty minarets

French North Africa, from Mar

rakesh the Red to Tunis the

White, is bounded on the north

by blue water and on the south by sand. Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia form

together the sunlit rim of the Dark

Continent ?

strangely barbaric lit

tle countries at the back door of

Europe. Lying within twenty hours

of Marseilles, within a night's voyage of Sicily and a morning's crossing of

Gibraltar, they belong nevertheless

to another very different world: they are the farthest outposts of the East,

strongholds of all that is most beau

tiful and most mysterious in the

civilization of Islam. They are coun

tries of veiled women and slippered men, of brilliant markets drenched

in the white African sunshine, of

snake-charmers, story-tellers, and

minarets from which the muezzin

still calls the faithful to their prayer. Casablanca, that flat, white, half

modern town on the Atlantic sea

board of North Africa, is the prosaic gateway to some four or five of the

most enchanting cities of the world.

Perhaps the strangest and the love

liest of these lies off to the south where the Moroccan plain, sweeping

back from the sea, rises into the foot hills of the Greater Atlas

? Marra

kesh the Red. This proud old capital of the Sultan's empire stretches away, with its green fringe of palms, behind a

long, low, copper-colored wall; be

yond, like artificial scenery painted upon the blue curtain of the sky, tower the great rugged summits of the Atlas, with their eternal canopy of snow.

as far as its atmosphere is con

l\ cerned, Marrakesh is somehow reminiscent of the Bagdad of The

Arabian Nights. The colorful people of a hundred southern tribes come to

gossip and barter in its market-place; its lofty minaret, the Koutoubia, is the pride of Morocco; its gardens are as beautiful as the most beautiful of

Spain. The overland journey eastward

from Casablanca is a too-short suc

cession of clear glamorous days spent inside the walls of crumbling ancient

towns, and a succession of incom

parable starry nights. First, Rabat and Sale, facing one another across a shallow estuary like two white birds

? Rabat and Sale, twin ports



24o THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

from which the corsairs sailed out to

prey on the commerce of old Spain, and in which Cervantes and Robin

son Crusoe were sold as slaves. Then

Meknes, the Versailles of North

Africa, the colossal folly of that mad

old sultan, Moulay Ismael, who built

here, on a promontory of the Moroc can upland, a palace which rivals in

splendor the Alhambra. And so to Fez.

Fez is one of those cities which,

once seen, can never be forgotten. It is a city of mystery, of narrow

streets and walled gardens, a city

into which a river runs and dis

appears. From above, from one of

those neighboring hills which, under

the evening sun, take on the fine warm color of tarnished gold, Fez

has the appearance of a green and

white mosaic, neatly laid out across

the lap of the valley. Surrounded

by a high crenelated wall of mud dried brick, it is a town of exquisite fretted gateways, of mosque towers, inlaid with green tiles that reflect the sun, of busy markets and little

shops in which one can buy the

brilliant tooled leather for which Fez is famous.

Each of the three divisions of North Africa has a distinctive charac

ter and a distinctive charm. The

gorgeous crumbling cities of Mo

rocco have no counterpart in the

country to the east. Perfumed Al

geria with its eternal flowers, its

white roads bordered with eucalyp tus trees, its miles of mountain

scenery, is easily first in the matter

of natural beauty. Tunisia, from

Kairouan to the desert towns of the

South, is, as far as its people and

their daily life are concerned, the

most picturesque of the three.

Throughout this whole North Afri can empire the French, showing a

tact and a respect for beautiful things which does them infinite credit, have overlaid the mellow civilization of

the Moors and Arabs with the prac tical machinery of modern life. The

unity of such perfect cities as Marra

kesh, Rabat, Fez, they have been

careful not to spoil. Yet even the re

moter towns of Southern Tunisia and

of the Moroccan plain are now ac

cessible to the tourist. The railways of North Africa, as a whole, are ex

cellent; and where the railways can

not penetrate, the ubiquitous busses

of the French Line, the Compagnie G?n?rale Transatlantique, carry the

traveller with equal comfort. It is now possible to dine, under the

shadow of the walls of Meknes, on

food that one would scarcely expect to find outside of a Parisian restau

rant; it is now possible to enjoy the last word in luxury on the very rim

of the Sahara. What wonder that North Africa competes, successfully, with Egypt and the Riviera for the favor of those who in winter are dis

satisfied with the pale Northern sun?

The

traveller coming overland from Casablanca crosses the Al

gerian border not far from Oujda, and

passes, on his way to Oran and the

Mediterranean, through two excep

tionally interesting towns ? Tlem

cen, known to the Moors of five centuries ago as "The Pearl of the

Mohgreb," famous today for the ruined city outside its walls, for its

bracing mountain air, its flowers, and the singular beauty of its environs; Sidi-bel-Abb?s, home of the Foreign Legion.

Oran, for all its commercial pros



WHITE CITIES AND OASIS TOWNS 24i

perity (it is the chief port of the de

partment that bears its name), is one

of the least prepossessing of Algerian towns; Algiers, on to the east, is one

of the most charming. An immense

white amphitheatre of closely built houses rising around what is perhaps the finest bay of the North African coast, Algiers is no less attractive

from a distance than from close at

hand. Like Cairo, it is a city in which the East and the West, which never

meet, walk side by side. Despite the

sophistication of its modern quarters and the vast hotels that overlook the

city from the height of Mustapha Sup?rieur, Algiers never allows one

to forget that it, too, belongs to

the Dark Continent, that over its

mosques the Cross has not yet re

placed the crescent.

No

description can do justice to

the variety of the Algerian countryside, to those vistas, by turn

so grandiose and so intimate, which one gets from the window of an auto

mobile or a train. White little valleys

overflowing with wild narcissus, mag nificent savage gorges along which

the road winds like some tenuous

gray thread, strange clambering towns, great forests of cork and ilex,

villages of flat-roofed cubical houses,

lonely flocks of sheep presided over

by picturesque shepherds dressed in the brown burnous of the Khabyles

? these, following one another in

bewildering succession.

Far over in the southeastern corner of Algeria^ midway across

those mountains which divide the

desert from the sea, lie the ruins of

the Roman city of Timgad ? an

African Pompeii, desolate and im

pressive. Beyond, where the Sahara

reaches northward like a great yellow sea, is the oasis town of Biskra, once

a starting point for those long cara

vans that trekked away toward Timbuktu and the Niger, now a sort

of gracious Deauville on the bur

nished rim of the desert. Biskra, and

its less sophisticated southern sister,

Touggourt, are places in which few

travellers will be disappointed. Un

der the dark shadow of their thou

sand palms, almond orchards bloom

in winter; Eden itself could not be more fertile than are they. Cater

pillar automobiles have replaced the caravans of fifty years ago: it is now

possible for the tourist to take, com

fortably and safely, either the twelve

hundred-mile journey across the

Sahara, or shorter, trans-desert trips to the corresponding towns of South

Tunisia.

Tunisia,

as far as its landscape is

concerned, is a country of com

paratively little beauty. Tunis, its

capital, is as different from Algiers as Algiers is different from Fez. Seen from the low white hill of its Kasbah, or citadel, Tunis, with its vaulted

streets, its over-arched markets, its

almost windowless houses, looks like the alabaster handiwork of some enormous swarm of mason bees.

And yet it is a city often charming, always picturesque. No town in

North Africa offers so much to the lover of little shops and the lover of bargains. Carpets from Kairouan, embroidered leather, hammered brass and copper, may be purchased in Tunis for a song.

A little to the north, on a gently sloping hill that overlooks the bay, lie the pitiful ruins of proud Car

thage, the home of Dido, the one-time



242 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

rival of Rome. And to the south,

rising abruptly from the level plain, is Kairouan, surnamed "The Holy," a place of pilgrimage for pious Mus

sulmans, a colorful little city, un

spoiled and strange. The traveller who decides to follow

southward the curving coastline of

Tunisia, through Sousse, Sfax and

Gabes, to Djerba, that "Island of the Lotus-eaters

" to which Ulysses came,

will be amply rewarded for his pains. And yet, even more interesting than

the cities of this costal region, are the

oasis towns ? Gafsa, Tozeur and

Nefta ? to the west. In these, as in

Biskra, one feels perpetually the

presence of the desert. Like some

siren, treacherous and beautiful, it

beckons always from beyond the

last trickle of water, the last clump of palms. These towns, bathed by

day in the blinding white sunlight of the Sahara, clothed by night in the

mysterious tranquillity of its silence, have all that vivid charm, that ro

mance, that glamour, which make

North Africa as a whole one of the most inviting travel countries of the

world.

Winter Sunset By Margaret Tod Ritter

I mortal, walk beneath a gold-leaf sky , Blown thin as glass. One footfall shall suffice

To shatter it. One pebble thrown, one cry, Shrill as a

flageolet, poignant, precise, Shall bring to ruin dome of asphodel.

This is the moon's bright rind stretched taut. One arrow

Of phantom nightingale shall prick the shell Into a small transparence, curved and narrow.

The honey-pallor of the sky is laid In shining amber shadow on the snow

Of aspen pool and cypress colonnade.

Now shall the alabaster afterglow Be brought to dust of daffodil, be brought, As smoke of dream, to

nothingness, to nought.



white cities and oasis towns

Documents