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Our final inference, then, is, that the Kabyles preserve strong traces of certain primitive customs, which in certain cases are attributable to a Christian origin. A true city of romance, a Venice isolated by waves of mountains, and built upon piles whose beams are of living crystal, Kalaa, all but inaccessible, attracts the tourist as the roc's egg attracted Aladdin's wife.
Seen hence, from the base of the precipice, where abrupt pathways trace their zigzags of white lightning down the rock, and where no vegetation relieves the harsh stone, the town of Kalaa seems some accursed city in a Dantean Inferno.
Some of these women are really handsome, and are freely decorated, even in public, with the singular enamels which are their peculiar manufacture, and with threads of gold in their graceful cheloukas or tunics. But Kalaa, like the picturesque "Peasant's Nest" described by Cowper in his Task, pays one natural penalty for the rare beauty of its site.
It is hard to give an idea of the difficulties in climbing up from Bogni to the city, where the hardiest traveler feels vertigo in picking his way over a path often but a yard wide, with perpendiculars on either hand. Finally, after many strange feelings in your head and along your spinal marrow, you thank Heaven that you are safe in Kalaa.
Contrast the square and stolid Kabyle head shown in the engraving on this page with the type of the Algerian Arab on page 494. The more we study them, or even rigidly compare our Arab with the amin of Kalaa, the more distinction we shall see between the Bedouin and either of his Kabyle compatriots.
The inhabitants of Kalaa pass for rich, the women promenade without veils and covered with jewels, and the city is clean, which is rare in Kabylia. The anaya never fails, and we are received with cordiality, mixed with stateliness, by an imposing old man in a white bornouse. "Enta amin?" asks the Roumi. He answers by a sign of the head, and reads our missive with care.
In any case, however, it is not in Morocco that the clue to Moroccan art is to be sought; though interesting hints and mysterious reminiscences will doubtless be found in such places as Tinmel, in the gorges of the Atlas, where a ruined mosque of the earliest Almohad period has been photographed by M. Doutté, and in the curious Algerian towns of Sedrata and the Kalaa of the Beni Hammads.
It is Kalaa, a town of three thousand inhabitants, divided into four quarters, which contrive, in that confined situation, to be perpetually disputing with each other, although a battle would disperse the whole of the tax-payers over the edges. Although apparently inaccessible but by balloon, Kalaa may be approached in passing by Bogni.
But the Hamadouch itself in the sultry season is but a thread of water, easily exhausted by the needs of a population counting three thousand mouths. Then the folks of Kalaa would die of thirst were it not for the foresight of a marabout of celebrity, whom chance or miracle caused to discover a hidden spring at the bottom of the rock.
The descent from the rock-perched city of Kalaa having been made in safety, and the animals being remounted at the first plateau, our Roumi traveler and his guides arrive in a few hours at the modern, fortified, but altogether Kabylian stronghold of Akbou. Here a letter from a French personage of importance gives us the acquaintance of a Kabyle family of the highest rank.
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