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 

 cases 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 politics, 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 



