From Tangier to Tripoli (Hardcover)

I am in the blazing white, many-terraced city of Algiers. My hotel is the de la Regence on the Place du Gouvernement, next to the mosque of Djama el Djedid. It is within a stone's throw of the great palace occupied by the government offices and just off the Boulevard de la Republique, in the very heart of the city. From my window, I look out over the Bay of Algiers and the wide Mediterranean with its ships going out and coming in. The foothills of the Atlas Mountains line the opposite side of the bay, and the city rises from the water in terrace above terrace until it reaches the great white citadel that formed the residence and chief fortification of the piratical days of the past. Down at the wharves, where the City begins, are mighty breakwaters that extend out like arms at each end, embracing steamers and sailing vessels from all parts of the world. More than four thousand big vessels and twelve thousand coasters, aggregating over three million tonnes, pass in and out of those arms every year. There are great Atlantic liners which call here on their way from New York to Naples and Genoa, big steamers from China and Japan, and also fast ships from Marseilles which brings the mails on their five-hundred-mile voyage across the Mediterranean in less than twenty-four hours.