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With the Khabyles a string of love-songs is called "Alamato," because this word occurs in the first couplet, always with a belligerent inspiration: "He has seized his banner for the fight In honor of the Bey whose cause he maintains, He guides the warriors with their gorgeous cloaks, With their spurs unto their boots well fastened, All that was hostile they destroyed with violence; And brought the insurgents to reason."
The Tripolitan village has now been moved to another site a certain number of troops, too, are definitely stationed at Metlaoui. "As usual," said Dufresnoy, "we came in for the blame. They say that we did not allow the real authors, the Khabyles, to be punished, because they are French citizens, and all the rest of it. Don't believe a word of that.
'Let us go, said they, 'to a sure refuge, For the enemy has fallen on our heads, But in Arba they established their home." Hanoteau, p. 124. The unhappy war of 1870, thanks to the stupidity of the military authorities, revived the hope of a victorious insurrection. Mograne, Bon Mazrag, and the Sheikh Haddad aroused the Khabyles, but the desert tribes did not respond to their appeal.
It was now quite dark, but at close quarters the stones began to take effect, and hardly was a man down, than five or six Khabyles ran out of the ranks to finish him off with their knives; others, meanwhile, went to the locked huts and fired them, or burst them open with dynamite.
"Half a cock," for instance, has travelled into the various provinces of France, Ireland, Albania, among the Southern Slavs, and to Portugal, from whence it went to Brazil; but the Arabs do not know it, nor do they know Tom Thumb, which with the Khabyles becomes H'ab Sliman.
The Khabyles meditated nothing short of a total extirpation of the Tripolitan stock; they sent to the mines of Redeyeff for auxiliaries of their nation, some of whom actually arrived in time for the slaughter; the rest were intercepted on the hill-paths by the police of Gafsa, who had been telegraphically summoned and despatched by special train.
Bon Mezrag is not a man, But the lowest of all beings; He deceived both Arabs and Khabyles, Saying, 'I have news of the Christians. "I believed Haddad a saint indeed, With miracles and supernatural gifts; He has then no scent for game, And singular to make himself he tries. From the mountain he has returned, Whoever followed him was blind. He took flight like one bereft of sense.
How many wise men have fallen On his traces, the traces of an impostor, From Babors unto Guerrouma! This joker has ruined the country He ravaged the world while he laughed; By his fault he has made of this land a desert." R. Basset, L'insurrection Algerienne, de 1871 dans les chansons populaires Khabyles Lourain, 1892.
There is a steep gully at one point, a dry torrent; the Khabyles lived on one side of it, the Tripolitans on the other, and between these two races there occurred, on a starlit night in May, 1905, an affray of unearthly ferocity.
The Khabyles, prudent folk, many of whom had served in the French Army, had long been laying in a store of warlike provisions; their secret was well kept, although it was observed that piles of stones were being collected round their huts, and that a goodly quantity of dynamite and petroleum was missing from the stores; some of them possessed guns and revolvers, the rest were armed with knives, daggers and savage mining gear.
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