66 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FRANCIS ARAGO. 
he hastened to send the news to the Dey, that the 
Frenchmen who had come to Algiers by land had among 
their baggage cases filled with zechins, destined to revo- 
lutionize the Kabylie. They immediately had these 
eases forwarded. to Algiers, and at their opening, before 
the Minister of Naval Affairs, all the phantasmagoria of 
zechins, of treasure, of revolution, disappeared at the 
sight of the stands and the limbs of several repeating 
circles in copper. 
We are now going to sojourn several months in Al- 
giers. I will take advantage of this to put together some 
details of manners which may be interesting as the pic- 
ture of a state of things anterior to that of the occupation 
of the Regency by the French. This occupation, it must 
be remarked, has already fundamentally altered the man- 
ners and the habits of the Algerine population. 
I am about to report a curious fact, and one which 
shows that polities, which insinuate themselves and bring 
discord into the bosom of the most united families, had 
succeeded, strange to say, in penetrating as far as the 
galley-slaves’ prison at Algiers. The slaves belonged to 
three nations: there were in 1809 in this prison, Portu- 
guese, Neapolitans, and Sicilians ; among these two latter 
classes were counted partisans of Murat and those of 
Ferdinand of Naples. One day, at the beginning of the 
year, a dragoman came in the name of the Dey to beg 
M. Dubois Thainville to go without delay to the prison, 
where the friends of the French and their adversaries 
had involved themselves in a furious combat; and al- 
ready several had fallen. The weapon with which they 
struck each other was the heavy long chain attached to 
their legs. 
Each Consul, as I said above, had a janissary placed 
