PRECEDING THE INVASION. 159 he might prove equal to the task which was to chap. be set before him. The able administrator of a 1_ great district in Algeria might be competent to head a department. The commander of the ' In- ' fernal Column ' was not likely to be wanting in the ruthlessness which was needed ; and if his vanity made it seem doubtful whether he was a man who could keep a secret, there was a confi- dential paper in existence which might tend to allay the fear. St Arnaud had warmly approved the destruc- tion of life which had been effected in 1844 by filling with smoke the crowded caves of the Dahra ; but he had sagaciously observed that the popular- ity of the measure in Europe was not co-extensive with the approbation which seems to have been bestowed upon its author by the military author- ities. These counter-views guided M. St Arnaud. In the summer of 1845 he received private infor- mation that a body of Arabs had taken i-efuge in the cave of Shelas. Thither he marched a body of troops. Eleven of the fugitives came out and surrendered ; but it was known to St Arnaud, though not to any other Frenchman, that five hundred men remained in the cave. All these people Colonel St Arnaud determined to kill, and so far, he perhaps felt that he was only an imitator of Pelissier ; * but the resolve which accompanied the formation of this scheme was original. He
- It is believed, however, that Pelissier left open some of the
entrances to the cave, and that he only resorted to the smoke a? a means of compelling the fugitives to come out and surrender.
