THE BREAD MARKET.

A DAY IN AFRICA.

Part Second.

IV.

T Sunday. I know whose

when the Aissawa are not overrunning it, or no fête is going on, the place is said to be as dull and silent as a plague-smitten city.

It being my last as well as my first day in Africa, I did not wait for the Hadji to call me that morning. I was an early bird, astir even before the slightest worm of a breakfast was practicable. Having completed my toilet, I wandered out on the platform in front of my bedroom to kill the intervening hour. Discovering a stone staircase leading still higher, I mounted the steps, and found myself on the roof of the hotel.

The Kasba on the height had all its win

week in Tangier, the Mohammedan, the Jew, and the Christian having each his own. It was Sunday; but what was more to the purpose, it was also a market-day. I had caught the town in one of its spasms of business. Between these spasms, and

There were figures moving on several of the neighboring house-tops. All the roofs were perfectly flat, and most of them surrounded by low battlements. Yonder was a young negress in sulphur-hued caftan and green girdle, shaking a striped rug over a parapet, and looking consciously picturesque. On a terrace further off a Moorish washer-woman and a little girl were spreading out their härcks and embroidered napkins on the flag-stones: the sun would reach them by-and-by. At my right was a man indolently lifting himself off a piece of carpet laid dangerously near the unprotected roof edge-possibly a summer boarder who had chosen that airy bed-chamber. He was rubbing his eyes, and had evidently slept there overnight. In this temperate climate, where the thermometer seldom rises above 90°, and rarely falls below 40°, the house-top would be preferable to an inside room to a summer boarder. On many of the roofs was evidence of pretty attempts at gardening, oleanders, acacias, palms, and dwarf almond-trees being set out in ornamental jars and tubs. There, no doubt, was the family resort after night-fall, the scene of ceremonious or social visits, and, I imagine, of much starry love-making.

Behind the hotel, in a desolate vacant lot checkered by small vats half filled with dye-stuffs, was an Arab tanner at work. Standing in the midst of his colored squares, he resembled a solitary chessman. I could look directly down on his smooth bare skull, which seemed cast of gilt-bronze or bell-metal. He wore nothing but a breech-cloth. The Moorish tanners are very expert, and employ arts not known to the trade elsewhere. They have a process by which lion and panther skins are rendered as pliable as satin, and of creamy whiteness. The green leather of Tafilet, the red of Fez, and the yellow of Morocco are highly esteemed.

I was still on the roof-top when the Hadji summoned me to breakfast, immediately after which we set forth on a stroll through the city. The streets of Tangier lose a little on close inspection by daylight; they are very dirty and very narrow, forming a labyrinth from which a stranger could scarcely extricate himself without the grace of God. I was constantly imagining we had come back to our starting-point, the houses being un

distinguish one from the other. like walking through endless avenues of tombs. Each building presented to the contracted footway an inhospitable, massive wall, set with a door of the exact pattern of its neighbor. This monotony is a characteristic of Oriental street architecture. No wonder the robber chief, in "The Forty Thieves," put a chalk-mark on the door of Ali Baba's house in order to find it again; and no wonder the slave-girl Morgiana completely frustrated the device by marking half a dozen doors in a similar manner.

Whatever of elegance there may be inside the Moorish houses, the outside is careful to give no hint of it. I believe that some of the interiors are lavishly decorated. Once or twice, in passing a half-open gate, I caught sight of a tessellated patio, with a fountain set in the midst of flowers and broad-leaved shrubbery, reminding me of the Andalusian court-yards. But the domestic life of the Mussulman goes veiled like his women.

For a city with so many Sundays, Tangier makes a rather poor exhibit in the line of sacred architecture. The foreign legations have a secluded chapel somewhere, and there are several mosques and Jewish synagogues, but none of note, except the Mohammedan mosque, whose porcelain-plated tower is the best part of it. In my quality of Christian dog I was not admitted to the edifice. The Hadji described the interior as being barren of interest. When the faithful go in to devotions they leave their foot-covering in the vestibule. As we went by that morning there were thirty or forty empty slippers of all sizes and colors arranged in a row on the stone pavement. They suggested the remnants of a row of soldiers that had been blown away by some phenomenal volley.

The Moors are handsome men, haughty of feature, and with great dignity of carriage. The Arab women, of whom we met not so many, left their charms to the imagination. Though they were muffled up to the eyelids, showing only a strip of buff forehead, they generally turned aside their faces as we approached them. Their street costume was not elaborate-a voluminous linen mantle, apparently covering nothing but a wide-sleeved chemise reaching to the instep and caught at the waist. Their bare feet were thrust into half-slip