Africa Appeals To Thomas Nelson Page.

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 23, 1912:
Author Believes European Possession of Northern Part Will Benefit the World.
LAND ALL FERTILE, HE SAYS
But After an Automobile Tour of It He Gets the Impression That Islam Is Awaiting a Chance to Rise.
    Thomas Nelson Page, the author, and Mrs. Page arrived at the St. Regis yesterday from their Summer place at York Harbor, Me., on their way to Washington, Mr. Page went direct to York Harbor when he came back last June from a long automobile tour in Northern Africa, so that yesterday was the first opportunity there was to get him to tell about it. He is enthusiastic over Northern Africa as a paradise for the automobilist.
    "In common, I suppose, with many other people, I had an idea that the desert began a little after you left the coast," said Mr. Page, "but far inland I found land just as fertile as the valley of Virginia, where fine wheat fields abounded, and where, so I was told, they raise four crops of potatoes a year.
    "We traveled about 2,000 miles, going to Biskra and thence by Constantine to The Grand Kabylia. To our great surprise, we found that as thickly settled in the mountains as any part of the world. Everybody we met was civil, but the impression made upon me was that Islam was just waiting for a chance to rise, and, just as in Egypt, it seemed to me that nothing but the fact that the people were without arms and very closely watched held them down. We were among them at the time of the outbreak at Fez.
    "I had an idea previously that the French had not been very successful as colonizers, but Algeria and Tunisia seem to me the most admirably governed colonies I have ever been in.
    "Of course, I had heard about the Roman ruins in Northern Africa, and I was prepared to see a great many of them, but it seemed as if there were more than in Italy. There are many ruins where no attempt at excavation has been made — for example, the city of Cherchell, which we know was the capital of Juba II., who married the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra. The ruins of Carthage proved far more extensive than I had imagined.
    "The furthest south we reached was Medinine, which is in an oasis. That is where troglodytes, or cave dwellers, live.
    "The most interesting thing I saw? Well, apart from the life itself, which, being Oriental is interesting because so different from ours, the Kabyles were the most interesting people I saw, living, as they do, in stone huts without windows or chimneys. The most interesting place was Carthage, and the most interesting structure was the extraordinary coliseum at El Tem. To cross a plain twenty miles in extent on an ancient Roman road, which runs straight as a taut string for ten miles, a plain without a single habitation except a few scattered nomad tents, and then come upon an amphitheatre second in size only to that at Rome, appealed to me as a wonderful experience. At the back of this coliseum is a small Arab village quarried out of the coliseum itself.
    "From Medinina, which is within fifty miles of the Tripolitan border, we went south to Biskra, then we traveled northeastward, and then into Tunisia, along the south shore of the Gulf of Gabes, by Sousse, Sfax, and Gabes, to the sacred city of Kirouan, one of the three holy places of Islam.
    "We found the hotels generally good, most of them being in French hands, except that in the interior they were rather primitive. We were fortunate in having a chauffeur who was an admirable courier, and a hotel keeper told us with some awe, that he had been the driver for the Governor General of Algeria and had driven the late King of England.
    "In looking over that country I was moved to reflect that Rome had occupied it for 500 years and then lost it, and that Belisarius had again conquered it for Constantine, and it had been Roman for another hundred rears. Rome covered the whole region with proofs of her civilization — aqueducts, roads, and fortresses. All were swept away by the people who had been there before the Romans, and things became as they were before. I wondered if France would make more impression than Rome in 500 years, and whether the natives would some day reassert themselves.
    "But the impression grew upon me that it was for the benefit of the world that the whole of North Africa should belong to European nations. I am just as certain of that as of any fixed principle. I cannot point out too strongly that those err who imagine the northern part of Africa is desert land. The whole littoral is as fertile as you could wish land to be."