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opening up the colony; the Délégations Financières, composed of French colonists, French taxpayers, and a certain number of well-to-do Arabs. These financial delegates discuss the budget for Algeria, which incidentally, and contradictorily, is independent of France, as is also the Bank of Algeria, which prints its own banknotes. Finally we have the Conseil Supérieur composed of twenty-two members: the Procureur-Général, the Admiral, the préfets and a few Arabs of importance who meet once a year under the presidency of the Governor-General to vote the budget for Algeria.

But even here the Parliament in Paris is afraid of letting the wretched colony look after itself, and it insists upon ratifying the budget, without knowing anything about it.

Algeria, therefore, is not a colony, but part of France, administered in the same way as any French department, but under the care of the Governor-General appointed by the Home Office, who is all-powerful without having any real authority at all. The communes are French or mixtes; the Arabs have a certain say in the government, but not much; the budget is separate, but under the scrutiny of the Palais Bourbon.

All this seems complicated enough, but the mystery is not over—it deepens as we leave the northern districts of Algeria and move south. We have now seen the rôles of the various functionaries in the three departments of Constantine, Alger and Oranie, and we must turn to the area known as the Territoires du Sud.

The actual boundary between the departments and