The tram that passes the hotel gates took me into the town and dropped me at the Place du Gouvernement.

With its strange fusion of East and West, its great white-domed mosque flanked by the tall minaret contrasting with its formal French colonnaded facades, its groupings of majestic white-robed forms and commonplace figures in caps and hard felt hats; the mystery of its palm trees, and the crudity of its flaring electric lights, it gave an impression of unreality, of a modern contractor's idea of Fairyland, where anything grotesque might assume an air of normality.

The moon shone full in the heavens, and as I crossed the Place I saw the equestrian statue of the Duke of Orleans silhouetted against the mosque.

The port, to the east, was quiet at this hour, and the shipping lay dreamily in the moonlight.

Far away one could see the dim outlines of the Kabyle Mountains, and the vague melting of sea and sky into a near horizon.