From the
summit of Taourit el Embrank we can count more than twenty of these
Kabyle towns, perched on the peaks around us, and separated by
profound chasms.
[Illustration: TOBRIZ, AN ENEMY OF THE GUILLOTINE.]
Every trait points out the distinction between the Kabyles and the
surrounding Arabs. The Arabs seek laziness as a sovereign good; the
Kabyles are great artificers. The Arabs imprison their wives; the
Kabyle women are almost as free as our own. The Kabylian adherence to
the Mohammedan faith is but partial, and is variegated by a quantity
of superstitions and articles of belief indicating quite another
origin. While the Koran proclaims the law of retaliation, eye for
eye and tooth for tooth, the more humane Kabyle law simply exiles
the criminal for ever, confiscating his goods to the community. It
is true, the family of a murdered person are expected to pursue the
homicide with all the tenacity of a Corsican vendetta, but the tribal
laws are kept singularly clean from the ferocity of individual habits.
A strange thing, indicating probably a derivation from times at least
as early as Augustine, is that the Kabyle code (a mixture, like all
primitive codes, of law and religion) is called by the Greek term
canon (_kanoun_). An institution of great protective use, in practice,
is the safe-conduct, or _anaya_, a token given to a guest, traveler or
prescript, and which protects the bearer as far as the acquaintance of
the giver extends: it may be a gun, a stick, a bornouse or a letter.
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