is announced in the streets by the village crier, in order that sick people and pregnant women may take of it what they want.  Mutual support permeates the life of the Kabyles, and if one of them, during a journey abroad, meets with another Kabyle in need, he is bound to come to his aid, even at the risk of his own fortune and life; if this has not been done, the djemmaa of the man who has suffered from such neglect may lodge a complaint, and the djemmaa of the selfish man will at once make good the loss.  We thus come across a custom which is familiar to the students of the mediaeval merchant guilds.  Every stranger who enters a Kabyle village has right to housing in the winter, and his horses can always graze on the communal lands for twenty-four hours.  But in case of need he can reckon upon an almost unlimited support.  Thus, during the famine of 1867-68, the Kabyles received and fed every one who sought refuge in their villages, without distinction of origin.  In the district of Dellys, no less than 12,000 people who came from all parts of Algeria, and even from Morocco, were fed in this way.  While people died from starvation all over Algeria, there was not one single case of death due to this cause on Kabylian soil.  The djemmaas, depriving themselves of necessaries, organized relief, without ever asking any aid from the Government, or uttering the slightest complaint; they considered it as a natural duty.  And while among the European settlers all kind of police measures were taken to prevent thefts and disorder resulting from such an influx of strangers, nothing of the kind was required on the Kabyles’ territory:  the djemmaas needed neither aid nor protection from without.(35)

I can only cursorily mention two other most interesting features of Kabyle life; namely, the anaya, or protection granted to wells, canals, mosques, marketplaces, some roads, and so on, in case of war, and the cofs.  In the anaya we have a series of institutions both for diminishing the evils of war and for preventing conflicts.  Thus the market-place is anaya, especially if it stands on a frontier and brings Kabyles and strangers together; no one dares disturb peace in the market, and if a disturbance arises, it is quelled at once by the strangers who have gathered in the market town.  The road upon which the women go from the village to the fountain also is anaya in case of war; and so on.  As to the cof it is a widely spread form of association, having some characters of the mediaeval Burgschaften or Gegilden, as well as of societies both for mutual protection and for various purposes—­intellectual, political, and emotional—­which cannot be satisfied by the territorial organization of the village, the clan, and the con federation.  The cof knows no territorial limits; it recruits its members in various villages, even among strangers; and it protects them in all possible eventualities of life.  Altogether, it is an attempt at supplementing the territorial grouping by an extra-territorial grouping intended to give an expression to mutual affinities of all kinds across the frontiers.  The free international association of individual tastes and ideas, which we consider as one of the best features of our own life, has thus its origin in barbarian antiquity.