The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-02-24

Arab bootblacks moving about begging custom, and Arab newsboys who will give you the latest Gran daily for one or two sous The city has a number of dailies, and they publish telegrams from all over the world. It has schools, libraries and q museum There are parks here and there throughout the town, un- der the trees of which one sees French peasant girls sitting and knitting; there are many bareheaded French women moving about, and now and then a Frenchman in a blouse pushing a cart just as in France.
 The Village Naigre.
 If one would see the African side of this French town he must go back of this modern section, to the hills above it. There is what Is known as the Village Naigre, which may mean Black Village cbENegro Village, as one wishes to trans late 1t. The houses in this quarter are of only one story; they are fat-roofed and of African style. There Arabs sit n the streets chatting. Many lie at fuh ength upon mats on the paVements wrap led up in their gowns. There are Moor 5h coffee houses where Arabs and Ser 5ers are drinking together as they sit -ross-legged on the floor, and there are Arab women moving about, each finding aer way through a peep-hole about as Jig around as a wedding ring, which she Has Uldu6 III lll6 NIll1, SHttlihN SWIM which she wraps tightly about her. There are also Berber girls with big earrings, their cheeks and chins blue with tattoo ing.
 In addition to these characters there are jugglers and storytellers, with crowds of Arab men and boys watching their an tics and listening to their tales; there are shoemarks and tailors working out on the streets, water carriers and ped ders and all the other features of the life of the native. Such black villages or native quarters are found connected with all Algerian towns. The French quarters are almost altogether French, but one has only to go to the outskirts to find all the motley characters who in habit north Africa.
 In Old Gran.
 have spent some time here. looking for the old Oran The French have wiped out all vestige of it. It was prob ably port in the days of the Romans, and 1t must have had a long history. We know that the Mohammedans found ed a town here thousand years ago and along about fifty or sixty years before Columbus was moving about through the West Indies, trying to find new way to the Orient, a Spaniard wrote that Oran then had six thousand houses, one hundred and forty mosques and schools equal to the colleges of Cordova, Grena- da and Seville. Some time after this Gran was taken by Spain, but 1t was later recaptured by the Moors and final ly acquired by the French in 1881.
 A Land Of Rich Farms.
 During my stay in the province of Gran I have gone over a great part of 1t by rail. The country is wonderfully rich and much of it is covered with great fields devoted to grain. It is now winter and only the stubble is to be seen, but there are straw stacks standing every where on the landscape and the trains are loaded with wheat and other cereals The wheat is handled in tour-bushel bags, whivfl are piled high upon freight cars and then covered with tarpaulins. The grain is brought to the railroad on big wheeled carts with beds fifteen of more