except a kinky scalp lock back of the ear or, rather, upon the after

corner of the skull; and all sorts of barbarians in all sorts of weird

costumes, and all more or less ragged. And here are Moorish women who

are enveloped from head to foot in coarse white robes, and whose sex can

only be determined by the fact that they only leave one eye visible and

never look at men of their own race, or are looked at by them in public.

Here are five thousand Jews in blue gabardines, sashes about their

waists, slippers upon their feet, little skullcaps upon the backs of

their heads, hair combed down on the forehead, and cut straight across

the middle of it from side to side--the selfsame fashion their Tangier

ancestors have worn for I don't know how many bewildering centuries.

Their feet and ankles are bare. Their noses are all hooked, and hooked

alike. They all resemble each other so much that one could almost

believe they were of one family. Their women are plump and pretty, and

do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the last degree

comforting.

What a funny old town it is! It seems like profanation to laugh and jest

and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics. Only the

stately phraseology and the measured speech of the sons of the Prophet

are suited to a venerable antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall

that was old when Columbus discovered America; was old when Peter the

Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the first

Crusade; was old when Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered

enchanted

castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden

The Innocents Abroad