tart off to attend to his
shop till lunch, which will be about noon. Then a few more hours in
the shop, and before the sun sets a ride out to his garden by the
river, returning in time for dinner at seven, after which come talk,
prayers, and bed, completing what is more or less his daily round. His
wives will probably be assisted in the house-work--or perhaps entirely
relieved of it--by a slave-girl or two, and the water required will be
brought in on the shoulders of a stalwart negro in skins or
barrels filled from some fountain of good repute, but of certain
contamination.

In cooking the Moorish women excel, as their first-rate productions
afford testimony. It is the custom of some Europeans to systematically
disparage native preparations, but such judges have been the victims
either of their own indiscretion in eating too many rich things
without the large proportion of bread or other digestible nutriment
which should have accompanied them, or of the essays of their own
servants, usually men without any more knowledge of how their mothers
prepare the dishes they attempt to imitate than an ordinary English
working man would have of similar matters. Of course there are certain
flavourings which to many are really objectionable, but none can be
worse to us than any preparation of pig would be to a Moor. Prominent
among such is the ancient butter which forms the basis of much
of their spicings, butter made from milk, which has been
preserved--usually buried a year or two--till it has acquired the
taste, and somewhat the appearance, of ripe Gorgonzola. Those who
commence by trying a very slight flavour of this will find the fancy
grow upon them, and there is no smell so absolutely appetizing as the
faintest whiff of anything being cooked in this butter, called "smin."

Another point, much misunderstood, which enables them to cook the
toughest old rooster or plough-ox joint till it can be eaten readily
with the fingers, is the stewing in oil or butter. When the oil itself
is pure and fresh, it imparts no more taste to anything cooked in it
than does the fresh butter used by the rich. Articles plunged into
either at their high boiling point are immediately browned and
enclosed in a kind of case, with a result which can be achieved in
no other manner than by rolling in paste or clay, and cooking amid
embers. Moorish pastry thus cooked in oil is excellent, flaky and
light.

XIII

THE NATIVE "MERCHANT"

"A tur