The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-01
IN ANCIENT MOROCCO.
Sights That are Strange to Christian EsvaS

sights That are Strange to Christian Eyes.
 One of the most false and, possibly. For brief hour on the forenoon of the sabbath, which is Friday, piOus folk leave the backbiting and ehicanery of the baZaars and vanish silently within the portals of the mosque. over which. during divine service, flutters the red Dandrol. The city. is then seen in peaceful mood, a city of the dead; and the Europeans may ride unchecked past stalls where none trade, past wells where none draw water. The shrill- tongued .'muezzin' has proclaimed from the tall white minaret that Allah is the One God. and the slippered wor- shippers have gathered their flowing robes about them and gone within, to prostrate themselves and to testify to the Attributes.
 Such an hour, ere all humanity seethes back in the narrow alleys. should the stranger choose in which to spy out the land. His first surprise, if he is hotfoot from Europe. will be the lack of suburbs. A hundred thousand Arabs, Berbers, Jews and hybrids crowd. haggle. love or slay within the yellow girdIe of the crumbled walls, yet just without the gates a five min utes' canter brings us to the very de- sert. A little reflection will show, however, that the suburb the cheap and vulgar suburb, is one of the doubtful prizes of security, London struggles in gingerbread decredescence out to Harrow: Paris throws her ten- tacles even to Versailles; but, in a country like the Morocco of old, men slept more securely within guarded walls.
 Only the leper was entirely safe out side. and he bought immunity at too great price. Another explanation of the abandonment of the country dis tricts lies in the Moors inherent love of the bazar and market place. For him solitude has no attraction, and not the exiled Ovid sighed more deeply when consigned to punishment than does the offspring of Ishmael when business takes him into the wilds.
 Within the city itself the European is most struck by the low arches that span every other street, and by the ab- sence of sidewalk or pavement By the former he will, until he acquires the knacks of a sudden stoop in the sad- dle, like the Conanche Indian threaten ed by a speeding arrow, be struck on the temple. Unless the standard of height has appreciably risen in both men and beast, the original architect of those ten-foot arch-w ways, beneath xxrI1 1io11 ,,f,5 ,5n dignity on a caracolling barb or am- bling mule, either of them going 15 hands, must have been Isthmael him. self, his hand against his race.
 The absence of sidewalk is the af- fair of those who have no beast. and the sight of nervous pedestrian wedged between a frisky horse and an advancing Indian file of camels must be joy to the horseman of artistic perceptions. The pungent odor of the ship of the desert has such instant effect on other well-conducted hind legs paw the air, valse, and generally conduct themselves, as if they were the property of some beautiful equestrienne at the Hippodrome. Finally, the horse usually subsidies on some skinny but yoluble native, who promptly consigns it, and its rider, with quite un- necessary fervor, to the warm hospi- tality of the Pit.
 The beggars line the more fashions able thoroughfares, particularly on Saints days, in brigades. Miserable aims, so mean that the left hand would blush to know what the right has given, go a long way, and the Frank is able to cover himself with glory and bring transient sunshine to the pock- pitted face of some poor Arab with SO small a coin as might bring a look of scrofulous hauteur to the face of pro- fessional beggar of Madrid.
 Of shopping as we know it the European does none, for everything is brought to his garden, there to be. dealt with by his headman. If he in. sist on visiting the bazars, he will be very bored by the unasked advice of Initero,.o EyrnY,o Y,inJrY,ooIyatq nf any