The St. Mary banner. (Franklin, Parish of St. Mary, La.) 1889-1931, 1911-07-08

OF their grandeur reaches the eye 6.
the passers-by All the art and luxury
is within, lavished on the interior
court and its surrounding galleries
aud rooms. and all that the outside
affords is series of blank walls with
occasional barred windows, and
green-painted door. studded with huge
nails and banded with iron
Northward again from Rabat is
Laraiche, which greets one with a
note OF actual western enterprise in
the way OF steam tug to tow the
freight lighters over the bar. Its pic
turesque tumble of gray towers,
white walls and pink and yellow
washed houses. makes a brilliant pic
ture against the blue sky, but. like all
the other ports. Laraiche is best seen
from the bay, Moorish sanitation is
a thing to be carefully passed over and
left undescribed.
The big, white lighthouse at Cape
Spartel comes into view. the sky
streaked with the smoke of steamers
bold outlines of the mountains round
Tarifa loom trough the haze. The
silence and the mystery, the blue
green nights, the golden airs and the
wide, vacant spaces of sea and land
have gone; this is a high road of COM
raltar, where the people are playing
tennis. drinking tea and banging out
the latest comic songs on their p!-
amos
Rounding point, the steamer drops
anchor off Tangier. From the inside
the orientalism of Tangier is a bit
faded. there is too much of the boule-
wards, or rather, Of the Midway
Streets of Cairo" and of Barcelonese
underworld, mixed in with it, To one
fresh from the rigidly Mohammedan
cities to the south the difference is at
once apparent; here are whole streets
of Spanish. and Gibraltar Scorpions"
the offscourings of every port from
Cadiz to Genoa, and the Jews live |
where they please, instead OF being |
confined to "Mellah," as the Moors |
call a Ghetto. Here are cafe signs in |
French, Spanish and weird English, a
constant coming and going of tourists |
in gray tweeds and fluttering wells, !
the bazaars are piled with imitation .
Moorish Junk" manufactured in Ger
many, and displayed for the trapping
of the unwary And everywhere are
shifty- eyed individuals, in violently
Moorish attire, who accost the stran-
ger with unpleasantly leering offers to
act as guide" one wonders what
fanatical, exclusive Sallee would say
to all this?
But seen from the bay, before land
ing, the illusion is still perfect; a
sweep Of green hills, dotted with vii
las, and at their foot mass of
cleaning white houses One tall min
aret dominates the city, a few date
palms thrust their crests above the
maze of fiat roofs. In the harbor is a
tangle of shipping. fishing boats and
coasting vessels, with lateen sails and
painted prows. jostle black-sided
steamers with tall tunnels; there is a
horde of small boats. swirl Of white
draperies and bare legs. babel OF
voices. and the inevitable. wearying
stare of fierce. black eyes.
There may be a suspicion of pose
about it all. lurking suggestion that
possibly Tangier has found the easi-
est way of making living is to be
lust a little more aggressively itself
han ever, but. at first sight, it is as
.ruly oriental as even the out-of-the-
world cities down south. between the
ocean and the desert
CAARI &c cAxRv