Geronimo," together with the date of the discovery of the relics and their interment in the Cathedral. Heroism and martyrdom are not things of the past in the Catholic Church, not dim and misty legends of remote ages, but of frequent occurrence in the living present, as the contemporary records of the vast missionary work being carried on in every part of the globe by the pioneers, the advance guard of the Church's sacred army on the outposts of civilization and in savage lands abundantly testify. When in 1877 the International Association was formed with main object of abolishing slavery, that open sore of the world,21 and in opening out a route across the equatorial regions of Africa for the explorer and the trader, an opening was made for the messenger of the Gospel, it was to Mgr. Lavigerie and the society instituted by him for the special purpose of evangelizing the Arab and Negro races Pius IX. turned, assigning to the Algerian missioners the first share in the glorious work of the Catholic missions in Central Africa. Three of their number had already shed their blood in the Sahara, on the way to Timbuktu, whither they had hoped to carry the light of faith. They were no empty words which Mgr. Lavigerie inscribed as the motto of his missionary society on the papers presented to him by a priest from one of the most tranquil and well ordered dioceses of France in order to obtain his authorization to say Mass. Instead of the usual formula he wrote across them the words, "Endorsed for martyrdom" (Vu pour le martyre), and returned them to him, saying: "Read that; are you prepared for it?" "It is for this that I have come here," was his reply. Such was the spirit which animated the spiritual sons of Lavigerie who were to be found not only in Algiers and at Tunis, amid the ruins of Carthage on the spot where St. Louis of France breathed his last,22 but in the dark depths of the Continent, in the last hiding places of a brutal barbarism where cannibalism still prevails and slavery in its most degrading forms. It was this spirit which moved the Apostle of Algiers to 21 "My missioners, the White Fathers-so called on account of their habit," Cardinal Lavigerie told the Anti-Slavery Society in London at a meeting held on July 31, 1888-"are established in the Sahara and upon the high table-lands of Central Africa, from the north of Nyanza to the south of Tanganyika. Eleven of them have suffered martyrdom, whilst more than fifty others have died from fatigue and hardships." 22 On the taking of Algiers, in 1830, Charles X., who then occupied the throne of France, obtained from the Bey of Tunis the cession of the plot of ground where tradition states that St. Louis died. Ten years later a chapel and dwelling house were erected there by Louis Philippe in memory of his illustrious ancestor. By an unaccountable mistake, the statue of Charles V. (le Sage) had been sent from France to Tunis instead of the statue of St. Louis, and the massive proportions of the marble figure above the altar were a sorry representation of the angelic features and attenuated form of the saintly Crusader. uplift his eloquent voice in pathetic and passionate pleadings to succor and rescue from the inhuman monsters who trafficked in human flesh the wretched Negroes, victims of one of the most revolting and appalling crimes against humanity, appealing from a London platform to all to join him in the utterance of a loud cry to God first of all, and then to all Christian people, "God save Africa!" It was this spirit of the apostolate, manifest in word and work, which, to use Montalembert's words,23 made the hearts of all Catholics throughout Europe thrill with admiration and acquired for him an enviable place in history. 24 In embracing Christianity the Algerines, or the large majority of them, were, according to Lavigerie, returning to the faith of their forefathers, since most tribes are of Berber descent. Of the eight distinct races in Algeria the Kabyles or Berbers, descendants of the original inhabitants, occupying chiefly the mountainous parts, are the most active and industrious, living in villages and principally engaged in agriculture and fruit growing. Among them, we are told, the virtues of honesty, hospitality and good nature are conspicuous. "It is not their misfortune alone that the lowlands know them no more, not their misfortune only that Mohammedanism has debarred them from entering, as they would otherwise have entered, on the path of European progress and liberty; it is the misfortune of the whole civilized world. Descendants of a mighty race whose culture once spread from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and the Hauran, from Crete to Timbuctoo and the Soudan, there are still to be found among them the vestiges of the arts and sciences, of the spirit of conquest and the capacity for self-government which, if developed, would make them again a great nation."25 When the French conquered the once powerful mountain tribe of the Kabyles they treated them with special clemency, left them undisturbed in the possession of their property, and in no way interfered with the internal government, by which for many centuries they had regulated their own affairs. The Kabyle or Berber 23 Correspondant, May 25, 1868. 24 Leo XIII., in the bull reëstablishing the ancient primatial See of Carthage, recalls how Carthage had once been amongst the first to receive the faith of Christ-Carthage, whose name evoked memories of so many saints and martyrs, so many Bishops and doctors, of Perpetua and Felicitas, of Augustin, Tertullian and of Cyprian; how Carthage had been the scene of much heroism and courage under the persecution of proconsuls, the violence of Vandals, the merciless onslaught of Moslems; and how she had, until her final destruction, held unrivaled sway over the Church of Northern Africa, for hers was the metropolitan see, and to her authority 750 churches were subject. The ruins of ancient Carthage, now almost entirely buried beneath the sand of the desert and overgrown with grass, are situated on the shores of the Mediterranean, about ten miles from the city of Tunis. 25 "Among the Berbers in Algeria," pp. 4, 5. is the pet of the French community in Algeria, although the insurrection of 1871 was almost entirely confined to the Kabyles. In the famous Tombeau de la Chretienne, called by the natives KoberRoumia-the tomb of the Christian woman-at Algiers, what is presumed to have been a refuge for some early persecuted Christians has been found. The most important portion of the interesting ruins of the Roman seaport town Tipasa in Algeria consists of the remains of a large square church, the massive stone walls of which are wonderfully perfect, and a vast number of tombs, or rather stone coffins standing above the ground into which the calcined ashes of the dead were probably put. These are all without inscriptions, though on some of them the A and O (Alpha and Omega), the Christian monogram, was found. Tipasa was a colony of veterans founded by the Emperor Claudius. It is mentioned by Ptolemy and in the Itinerary of Antoninus. In the year 484 Huneric, the Vandal King, appointed an Arian Bishop to the Catholic See of Tipasa, in consequence of which many of the inhabitants of the city fled to Spain, and those who remained and refused to conform to the Arian doctrine suffered the mutilation of their right hands and tongues. On the west side of the fort at Sidi Ferruch, where the French army of invasion landed in 1830,26 are the ruins of a Christian church of the Roman epoch, dedicated to St. Januarius, and a club with iron spikes found among the débris is supposed to be a relic of the saint, who was killed in A. D. 410. Although Wilkin" discounts and discredits the assumption that the Berbers as a race were ever Christians-although he admits that in the palmy days of North African Christianity such of them as happened to dwell in the Roman towns were converted-many have been at pains to show that the blue cross on the forehead between the eyes with which the Berber girls tattoo their faces, contrary to the Koran, which expressly forbids tattooing, is a relic of former 26 The entrance to the barrack, built on the site of the old Koubba, ornamented with sculptured trophies of war and peace, bears the following inscription: Ici, le 14 Juin, 1830, Par l'ordre du Roi Charles X., Sous le Com. du Général de Bourmont, Vint arborer ses drapeaux, Donner l'Algerie à la France. An Arab tradition long existed to the effect that the Europeans would enter Algeria by Sidi Ferruch. Another Arab prophecy, in which some may see a latent touch of fine irony, predicted the fall of Algiers when the Christians should be at peace together. 27 Op. cit., pp. 106, 107. Christianity. Wilkin says they were never at any period of their history other than pagans or Mohammedans; but their Mohammedanism appears to be more or less skin deep. "The Kabyle," says General Daumas,28 "accepted but did not embrace Islamism. He is clothed with it as with a burnous, keeping beneath it his own social habits." The writer or compiler of "Walks in Algiers" goes further and says: "The Kabyles pay a very great regard to the teachings, and are very much under the influence of their priests or marabouts, but the influence is personal rather than sacerdotal. They do not consider themselves bound to accept the Koran as an entire rule of faith, and are said to have been in early times better Christians than they have proved themselves Mahommedans. In proof of which are cited their custom of keeping Sunday as the day of prayer, of seldom marrying more than one wife, of treating her as an equal rather than as a slave and of permitting her to go unveiled. In spite of the somewhat rough awakening which some of the too ardent Kabylophiles had in 1871, the philanthropists and politicians of Algeria still look forward with hope to the future of this remarkable people, believing that their qualities of industry, energy and truthfulness will by and by develop them into useful and intelligent citizens, and that as civilization reaches them the traditions of their earlier history will return more and more strongly upon them; that the cross with which the Kabyle women, in dim remembrance of a lost religion, so often tattoo their foreheads, may grow to be no mere barbaric ornament, but the holy symbol of a living faith.” Those traditions take us far back into history. At the close of the eleventh century a Berber dynasty, the Murabits or Almoravides, extended their authority over the greater part of North Africa, until they gave place in the middle of the succeeding century to the Muwahhids or Almohades, whose rule extended from the Atlantic to Tunis and lasted for a hundred years. The rule of these African princes, it is recorded, was generally mild and enlightened. They came for the most part from the native Berber population and were not disposed to be intolerant. The Christians were allowed to retain their churches and worship unmolested. We read of a Bishop of Fez as late as the thirteenth century, and the Kings of Morocco and Tunis were usually in friendly relations with the Pope. Christians were enrolled in large numbers in the African armies and appointed to civil offices. St. Louis IX. of France was so impressed by the natural piety and the mild and just rule of the Almohades King that he went to Africa on his way to the Holy Land to convert him and died in the attempt. The saintly 28 "La Kabylie." monarch may be said to have sacrificed his life for the propagation of the faith in North Africa, and it was in the fitness of things that a lineal representative of his house should have achieved the conquest of Algiers. Cork, Ireland. R. F. O'CONNOR. I' ETIENNE BRULE, EXPLORER AND DISCOVERER. F THE readers of Parkman or Shea remember at all the name of "Etienne Brulé, the interpreter," it probably brings up a vague image of one who played but a very subordinate part in the drama of adventure and discovery of which this continent was the scene during the seventeenth century. Yet the first white man to set eyes on Lakes Huron, Ontario and Superior, and the earliest explorer of Pennsylvania, Western New York and Ontario surely merits to be rescued from the night of oblivion by some "sacred bard." Now, this is the task that Mr. Butterfield has undertaken in his scholarly "History of Brulé's Discoveries and Explorations," and the most critical reader of the book will have to admit that the author by his painstaking study of the very meagre details about Brulé's movements left by contemporaries, and by bringing to bear on these scanty documents a well-trained "illative sense," has made good the claims of that intrepid pioneer to the honors of a great discoverer. Moreover, the originality which Mr. Butterfield claims for his narrative is thoroughly justified by the fact that the discoveries which this book proves conclusively to belong to Etienne Brulé, other historians, and Parkman in particular, attribute to Champlain himself. The successful issue of a long campaign, to be sure, is commonly ascribed to the good generalship of him who directs the marches and devises the manoeuvres of the troops, and as Brulé was but a servant or employé of Champlain the achievements of the man to a great extent redound to the glory of the master who directed them. But the "Father of New France" is now so rich in fame that he can well afford to leave Brulé all the honor due that capable subordinate. Samuel de Champlain, owing to the faithful, modest story he relates of his own exploits and to the tributes paid him both by those 1 "History of Brulé's Discoveries and Explorations, 1610-1626," by Consul Willshire Butterfield. The Helman Taylor Company, Cleveland, Ohio. The book is published under the patronage of the Western Reserve Historical Society. |