The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1901-12-12


market place, where caravans arrive
and whence they depart, where the
people meet and mingle and the great
religious and political movements are
famed and fed which from time to
time have convulsed the Empire. Ger
tainly it is the most interesting place
to strangers. Bales of strange merchan-
disc are being moved, camels are un-
loaded and donkeys loaded, green-tur-
baned merchants make rounds of in
spection, men on horseback, in vol
luminous white robes, with yellow slip
pers dangling straight down on each
side of the clumsy saddle, pick their
way hither and thither through the
crowd. Here and there are water
sellers, carrying upon their backs great
leaky skins fiabbily bullying with water,
and ringing small bells to attract atten-
ton. oe-makers squat cross-legged,
sewing and hammering upon slippers
and sandals only. BARRIERS ply their
trade in the open air, growing rich on
market days upon country CUSTOM -
Their office is of double nature, for
as i'll the old days, they bleed as well as
shave. They use no lather, only water;
and the customer sits upon the ground,
in front, while with razor, more or less
keen, the barber removes his hair,-the
head, oftener than the beard, being
shorn. In bleeding they make an in
cision at the base of the skull, cutting
to the bone. Bread-sellers crouch
against walls and door-ways, Indifferent
as are their customers, to the trihing fact
of dust and tleas. Funeral professions
pass on the run-for the dead Moslem
thus arrives at paradise more quickly.
Snake-charmers, with hideous cobras-
ecapellos around about their filthy
bodies saunter through the throng no.
tiles which wriggle about alarmingly
and dart out vicious tongues. NEGRO
mances, who really eat fire, are common
IN these streets as patent-medicine ia
kris at home. Half~grown negroes
from the Soudan are attired in nothing
but scant breech couts of Unframed
hide, in marked contrast to the stately
Moors and Arabs in flowing draperies.
Perhaps the oldest Of all the motley
throng are the negress slaves who were
born in the jungles below Sahara. They
are indescribably ugly, with short puffy
bodies, tremendous heads and huge
necks, lips like ebonized conch- shells
and nostrils back almost in line with
the facial angle. They wear haiks of
blue and white check, which intensity
the lustre of their coal-black skins.
Some of them are yelled, with an air of
monumental skittishness; but besides
the haik, little can be said of the rest
of the costumes. Some wear men S
caSt-otf trousers, others cavalry boots,
or anything else they can lay hands on;
but as a rule they are bare from the
feet like the claws of some unclean
beast. Hundreds of these slaves
may always be seen in the market
place. either as helpers, or on errandS
for their masters, or buying the fowls
to be beheaded in the revolving
"negress sacrifices 1t is with
difficulty that they are kept within the
bounds of even African ideas of de-
cency When not singing wild songs
of the jungles, they are generally fight
ing one another, often literally making
the wool fly in their jealous RACES.
Moorish soldiers scurry by,-bare-
footed, bare-legged, poverty stricken
and hungry, but always on the rush, and
commanding respect by reason of their
long guns. Genuine Bedouins of the
desert, on skinny steeds magnifcently
capariSoned, dash recklessly through
the thickest of the throng, unmlndful
of whom they may trample. Keabyles,
with leather aprons and shaven heads
present a study of African hill men.
They are the artisans of the country
and are always accompanied by their
hardy wives, who work at everything
beside their husbands Khabyle wo-
men wear but single garment
straight, scant chemise, reaching to the
bare feet, girded at the waist with a
brightly colored sash. Tall, powerfully
built Reefans, with brutal, forbidding
faces, stand in silent groups, always by
themselves, regarding the world with
proud, fearless eyes. They are the
mountaineers of Morocco, as we'll as
the pirates whose day is not alto
gather past. Like mountaineers the
world over, the race has proved uncon-
querable and fora thousand years those
that hold the rocky Businesses of the
coast have detied successive Sultans.
No contrast can be more striking than
that between their aspect and the de-
preciative, timid manner of the perse-
cuted Jews, and the dreamy, passive,
Indifferent air of the Moors, who are
merely enduring the ills of this life
while waiting for the better life of AL
lah'S paradise. Above every thing else