GENERAL ECONOMIC CONDTTTONS. 53 



Many of these eniigrants, however, spend only a part of the year in 

 the lowlands, returning home with their savings and putting in the 

 rest of their time cultivating their own land. Unlike the Arab, the 

 Kabyle is a patient and persistent workman. He is a true mountain- 

 eer — frugal, temperate, and hardy. 



It is astonishing with how little the Kabyle can sustain life. He 

 often inherits the merest patch of land, or only a single tree— some- 

 times oidy a branch of an olive tree that has its roots in another man's 

 land. With this slender patrimony and what he can make by hiring 

 his labor to others, he supports himself and his family. Now that 

 Kabylia is thoroughly pacified and the tribal wars that formerly 

 waged between almost every two neighboring villages have ceased, 

 there is a much larger acreage available for cultivation than was form- 

 erly the case. Every inch of arable land is -put into crops. Grain 

 and forage plants are grown in the river valleys and lower slopes, figs 

 and olives on the steeper hillsides. 



It is in horticulture, especially, that the Kabyles excel, the country 

 they inhal)it being better adapted to orchard than to field crops. They 

 are expert in grafting and other horticultural processes. Olive culture 

 is a specialty of these mountaineers. Every year they graft large 

 numbers of scions of improved varieties upon wild trees, and thus con- 

 stantly extend the area of their olive orchards. Fig trees are also 

 planted yearly in large numbers. They are handled with great skill, 

 capi'ification l)eing carefully attended to. Of olive and fig trees, as 

 well as of grapes and other kinds of fruit, there are a number of 

 varieties that are more or less peculiar to Kabylia. The dried leaves 

 of the fig and the twigs of the olive that are removed in pruning, as 

 well as the leaves of the ash and the elm, are utilized by the Kabyles 

 as foraoe for their domestic animals. It is said that two-thirds of the 

 population of these mountains depend absolutely upon the olive and 

 the fig for subsistence. Where these trees are present there are three 

 or four inhabitants to every 5 acres, while in parts of Kabylia where 

 they are wanting, from 5 to T acres of land are required to support 

 each person. 



The Kabyles do not raise cereals in quantity suflScient to supply their 

 own wants, and they nnist draw^ upon other parts of the colony for 

 grain. Flour is made into semolina or baked in an earthenware tray 

 into a sort of unleavened bread. Flour made from beans, nuts, Indian 

 corn, and sorghum is mixed by the poorer classes with barley flour. 

 Often wheat, barley, beans, and other plants are grown together in 

 the same field. Fruits, excepting olives, figs, and grapes, are gener- 

 ally of poor quality, although apricots, pomegranates, peaches, pears, 

 apples, and, in some sheltered valle3^s, oranges are grown. 



Wheat, barley, and beans are sown in the autumn, sorghum and 

 Indian corn in the spring. Otherwise, all these crops are handled in 



