‘As We “Was” in Algeria’
ANON.
‘Snap-shots taken on a tour in Algeria March 1900’. Algeria, 1900.
Oblong album (210 x 255 mm), 96 black and white photographs (c. 50 x 75 mm) window-mounted on 12 leaves, mostly captioned below in blue ink; a little spotting to endpapers and mounts; overall very good; contemporary dark orange pebbled cloth, upper cover with black frame and border and titled ‘Photographs’; a little wear to extremities.
A charming album of snapshots recording the journey of a party of British men and women from Marseilles to Algiers in March 1900. Opening with images of the tourists aboard the S.S. Villa de Madrid crossing the Mediterranean, the album captures their visits to Tunis, Carthage, Hammam-Meskontine, Constantine, Biskra, Sidi Okba, the Gorges du Chabet, Setif, Bougie, and Algiers.
The photographs show members of the party, groups of local people, streets, buildings, marketplaces, gardens, landscapes, and beaches. There are numerous appealing images: a distant lady on rocks by the sea captioned ‘Puzzle: find Amy’; members of the party leaning out of a railway carriage; Amy surrounded by ‘Arab kiddies’; ‘Arab children running a race’; an overloaded horse-drawn ‘Arab travelling-car’; and two women of the party posing in local dress, captioned ‘As we “was” in Algeria’.