IN CIVILIZED FRENCH AFRICA 



By James F. J. Archibald, F. R. G. S. 



EXPLORATION parties and travel 

 writers seem to have quite over- 

 looked the fact that the Dark 

 Continent has its light spots as well, and 

 that for the past sixty years the French 

 people have been establishing colonies 

 in northern Africa that are today models, 

 well worth the serious study of nations 

 supposed to be the great colonizing forces 

 of the world. 



When I made my first trip into Africa 

 from Zanzibar it was exactly as I had 

 expected to find it ; my first visit to Cape- 

 town or Pretoria afforded no surprises; 

 Dar-es-Salaam, the German East African 

 colony, was just what an African colony 

 should be ; and Mozambique afforded all 

 the material for kodak sketches that the 

 most exacting explorer could demand ; 

 but my African surprises began when I 

 started a three months' motor trip 

 through Tunis, Constantine, Algeria, and 

 Morocco, and from whence I have just 

 returned. 



At first I pitied myself in my supreme 

 ignorance of the truly marvelous work 

 the French government has done in Al- 

 geria in the past sixty years and in Tunis 

 during the past twenty years, but since 

 my return, filled with enthusiastic de- 

 scriptive tales, I have found but two men 

 who knew anything about the wonderful 

 work and especially about the wonderful 

 roads of the French colonies. One of 

 these was a French engineer, who had 

 built some of the roads, and the other was 

 my friend Savage-Landor, who has been 

 everywhere; even he betrayed some sur- 

 prise with regard to the condition in the 

 more remote parts of the interior. Since 

 my return I have talked to many well- 

 informed people until it has become a 

 sort of a game with me to try to find a 

 third who knows that the best roads of 

 the world today are in Tunis and Al- 

 geria — not a few thousand yards of sam- 

 ple roads, but a few thousand miles of 

 main roads and hundreds of miles of 



minor roads and trails perfectly built by 

 the most skilled engineers of France. 



When Count Roger de Martimprey 

 suggested a motor trip through the colo- 

 nies of northern Africa I immediately 

 thought of the young German officer who 

 has just completed a trip across Africa, 

 and of the tales of his experiences — of 

 building forty bridges within a few miles, 

 of taking two weeks to go one mile, and 

 of waiting six months in one place to 

 send natives to the coast for gasoline. 

 Count Martimprey's grandfather was one 

 of those Frenchmen who led the armies 

 of France and helped conquer the coun- 

 try, and was for many years governor of 

 Algeria, so he assured me that the roads 

 were perfect, but I had not been prepared 

 in my mind for half the wonderful truth. 



Good roads are not a source of sur- 

 prise to a Frenchman, for all their roads 

 are good, but the roads of Algeria and 

 Tunis are as far superior to the French 

 national roads as Pennsylvania Avenue is 

 superior to a Virginia pike. I cannot 

 make the comparison too strong, and I 

 mean it literally when I say that in weeks 

 of motoring we rarely found a road as 

 rough as the new pavement on Pennsyl- 

 vania Avenue is today. On the out- 

 skirts of some of the larger cities, where 

 the traffic was very heavy, we sometimes 

 found a few shallow ruts and traces of 

 wear, but these are repaired constantly. 



The roadways of Tunis and Algeria 

 have been projected by the most skilled 

 engineers of France ; consequently the 

 grades, curves, tunnels, and water-spans 

 are of the highest order of perfection. 

 There are few roads in French North 

 Africa that could not be used as the way 

 of an electric or steam line without any 

 regrading or leveling. The most impor- 

 tant feature of the construction is that 

 thev are absolutely straight where the 

 character of the country will permit. A 

 direct line is drawn on the map between 

 two points, and to all purposes that is the 



