zag, up and down, staggering
in a drunken way over hard cobble-stones and leading nowhere. There are
mosques and stores entered by horse-shoe arches, a bazaar dotted over
with squatting women, cowled with dirty blankets, selling warm
griddle-cakes; moving here and there are the same spectral figures,
similar dirty blankets veiling them from head to foot; over the way are
cylinders of mat, with nets caging the apertures at each end, to hold
the cocks and hens, rabbits and pigeons, brought for sale by Riffians,
descendants of the corsairs of that ilk, stalwart, brown, and
bare-legged, with heads shaven but for the twisted scalp-lock left for
the convenience of Asrael when he is dragging them up to Paradise.
Hebrews have their standings around, and deal in strips of cotton, brass
dishes, and slippers, or change money, or are ready for anything in the
shape of barter. Seated in the shade of that small niche in the wall, as
on a tailor's shop-board, is an adool, or public notary, selling advice
to a client; in the alcove next him is a worker in beads and filigree;
from a dusty forge beyond comes the clang of anvils, where half-naked
smiths are hammering out bits or fashioning horse-shoes. Mules with
Bedouins perched, chin on shin, amid the bales of merchandise on their
backs, cross the bazaar at every moment; or files of donkeys, stooping
under bundles of faggots, pick their careful way. By-and-by--but this is
not a frequent sight--a Moslem swell ambles past on a barb, gorgeous in
caparisons, the enormous peaked saddle held in its place by girths round
the beast's breast and quarters, and covered with scarlet hammer-cloth.
If we move about and examine the stalls, we see lumps of candied
sweetmeats here; charms, snuff-boxes made of young cocoanuts and beads
there; and jars of milk or baskets of dates elsewhere. At the fountain
yonder, contrived in the wall, mud approached by rugged, sloppy steps,
water-carriers, wide-mouthed negro slaves, male and female, with brass
curtain-rings in their ears, and skins blacker than the moonless
midnight, come and go the whole day long, and gossip or wrangle with
loafers in coarse mantles and burnous of stuff striped like
leopard-skin. Beside the silent, gliding, ghost-like Mahometan women and
the Hottentot Venus, you have Rebecca in gaudy kerchief and Dona Dolores
in silken skirt and lace mantilla from neighbouring Spain. In the
mingling crowd all is novelty, all is noise, all is queer and sh