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.
The _anaya_ is the sultan of the Kabyles, doing charity and raising no
taxes--"the finest sultan in the world," says the native proverb. The
Kabyles press into all the towns and seaports for employment with
the same independence as if they were a neighboring nationality. They
build houses, they work in carpentry, they forge weapons, gun-barrels
and locks, swords, knives, pickaxes, cards for wool, ploughshares,
gun-stocks, shovels, wooden shoes, and frames for weaving. They weave
neatly, and their earthenware is renowned. In addition, they are
expert and shameless counterfeiters. Yes, the fact must be admitted:
these rugged mountaineers, so proud, and, according to their own code,
so honorable, never blush to prepare imitations of the circulating
medium, which they only know as an appurtenance and invention of their
civilized conquerors. In his rude hovel, with all the sublimities
of Nature around him, this child of the wilderness looks up to the
summits of the Atlas, "with peaky tops engrailed," and immediately
thereafter looks down again to attend to the engrailing of his neat
five-franc pieces, which can hardly be told from the genuine. This
multiplication of finance was punished under the beys with death.