rs were out.

[Illustration: _Photo by A. Cavilla, Tangier._]

A TYPICAL MOORISH STREET.

[_To face p. 108._]

From the west coast at Saffi terrible reports arrived of the havoc the
weather had made of the city. The lowest barometer ever seen had preceded
sheets of rain, and a solid _hamla_ (flood) had entered the gates from
the valley above, filling the narrow streets in a few moments to a depth
of seven and eight feet, and carrying everything before it: men, women,
children, and cattle were swept in a torrent through the water-gate out
to sea, sometimes a hand stretched out above the eddies. Then the gate
became blocked with floating _debris_ and bodies, and the flood rose to
ten feet in the principal street. The townspeople who survived took
refuge on their roofs. The vice-governor was drowned. Houses, shops,
mills, and mosques were gutted as if by fire; furniture and household
goods were ruined; the Saffi shopkeepers were beggared. For many weeks
after the survivors starved upon roots, in spite of a subscription raised
in Tangier to relieve them.

The rain apparently was something like a waterspout. Happily Tetuan was
exempt from waterspouts, and on days when the rain gave over for a time
we rode, or, picking our way along the muddy streets, drank tea with some
Moor.

One dull afternoon we sampled the state of the roads outside, R. on a
donkey, and Mr. Bewicke and myself on foot. Walking out by the Gate of
the Tombs, we bore to the left, and dived into the narrowest of narrow
lanes, shut in with tall cane fences and high mud-banks crowned with
prickly pear, the shape of whose fat, fleshy leaves recalls moles' paws.

The donkey was an unusually large one, and its pack rolled more than
packs in general: before we saw the last of Tetuan its rider had many a
fall off her unsteady perch; and if there is truth in the Moorish saying
that "one does not become a horseman till one is broken," R. may claim to
have qualified. It shied and bucked and came on its nose over rocks; but
this time Mr. Bewicke's boy, Mohr, directed its ways, and thoroughly
enjoyed cudgelling it along with a stick, helped by its rider's switch,
cut from a quince-tree, which often as not hit Mohr instead of the ass.

By-and-by we met a countryman, his wife, and a donkey. The woman, who
wore little except two striped towels, and a handkerchief round her head,
staggered along under a great load of faggots. She was stunted and
wrinkled, removed me