e a very
respectable body, being without one exception exceedingly well-bred
gentlemanly individuals, and several of them, particularly Mr Hay, the
British consul-general, possessed of high literary attainments. They
enjoy very large salaries from their respective governments, varying from
ten to sixteen thousand dollars per annum, so that, as all the
necessaries and indeed many of the luxuries of life may be obtained at a
very cheap price at Tangiers, they live in a state of magnificence more
akin to that of petty kings than consuls in general. The most perfect
harmony exists amongst them, and if, at any time, any little dispute
occur between two or three of them, the rest instantly interfere and
arrange matters; and they are invariably united to a man against the
slightest infringement of their privileges and immunities on the part of
the Moorish Government, and a slight or injury to one is instantly
resented by all. The duties of the greatest part of them are far from
being onerous, more especially as each is provided with a vice-consul,
who is also an exceedingly well-bred and very well-paid gentleman. They
pass the greatest part of their time in cultivating their delicious
gardens, which, surrounded by hedges of _ksob_, which is a species of
gigantic reed, cover the hills in the vicinity of Tangiers. Their
houses, which are palace-looking buildings in the European taste and
which contrast strangely with the mean huts of the Moors, are all
surmounted by a flag-staff, which on gala days displays the banner of its
respective nation. It is curious then to gaze from the castle hill on
the town below; twelve banners are streaming in the wind of the Levant,
which blows here almost incessantly. One is the bloody flag of the Moor,
the natural master of the soil; but the eleven are of foreigners and
Nazarenes, and are emblems of distant and different people. There floats
the meteor banner of England beside the dirty rags of Spain and Portugal.
There the pride of Naples, of Sardinia, and Sweden. There the angry
tricolor; and not far from it the most beautiful of all, the Dannebrog of
Denmark, a white cross gleaming consolingly amidst blood and fire, as
when first seen by Waldemar; neighbour to it the Austrian; there the
Orange; and yonder, far remote from all, like the country, the stripes
and stars of the United States. Tangiers, with a Moorish and Jewish
population, is not the city either of the Moor or the Jew: it