Under a bushel their unkempt heads are hidden,
They speak a _patois_ unintelligible,
You can understand nothing they say.

"The combat with these gloomy invaders
Is like the first ploughing of a virgin soil,
To which the harrowing implements
Are rude and painful;
Their attack is terrible.

"They drag their cannons with them,
And know how to use them, the impious ones;
When they fire, the smoke forms in thick clouds:
They are charged with shrapnel,
Which falls like the hail of approaching spring.
Unfortunate queen of cities--
City of noble ramparts,
Algiers, column of Islam,
Thou art like the habitation of the dead,
The banner of France envelops thee all."[6]

[6] Hanoteau, pp. 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11.

It is, one may believe, in similar terms that these songs, lost to-day,
recount the defeat of Jugurtha, or Talfarinas, by the Romans, or that of
the Kahina by the Arabs. But that which shows clearly how rapidly these
songs, and the remembrance of what had inspired them, have been lost is the
fact that in a poem of the same kind on the same subject, composed some
fifty years ago by the Chelha of meridional Morocco, it is not a question
of France nor the Hussains, but the Christians in general, against whom the