Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1911-06-14
OId Nell IN AneIe~-

I those of the open ports; not a Chris
tian is allowed TO dwell in the town.
Built in a time when it was enor-
mously wealthy it is said, by those
who have visited 1t, to be literally a
city of palaces; but Moorish palaces
are so constructed that hardly a hint
of their grandeur reaches The eye of
the passers-by. All the art and luxury
is within, lavished on the interior
court and its surrounding galleries
and rooms, and all that the outside
affords is series of blank walls, with
occasional barred windows, and a
green-painted door, studded with huge
nails and handed with iron.
NortLward again from Rabat is
Laraicne 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
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
bound in and out of the Straits, the
bold outlines of the mountains round
Tarlfa 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 high road OF COM
merce, just round the corner lies Glib
raltar, where the people are playing
tennis, drinking tea and banging out
the latest comic songs on their pi-
amos.
At TansIer.
Rounding point, the steamer drops
anchor of 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 Barceionese
underworld mixed in with 1t. To one
fresh from the rigidly Mohammedan
cities to the south the difference is. at
once apparent; here are whole streets
of Spanish, ard Gibraltar Scorpions"
the offscoGrlngH of every port from
Cadiz to Genoa, and the Jews live
where they please, instead of beina
confined to "Mellah" % the Moors
call Ghetto. Here are cafe signs in
French, Spanish and weird English,
constant coming and going of tourists
In gray tweeds and fluttering wells,
the baZaars are piled with imitation
Moorish Junk" manufactured in Cor
many and displayed for the trapp' ng
of the unwary. And everywhere -"
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:
sweep of green hills, dotted with vii.
las, and at their foot mass Of
cleaning white houses One tall min
aret dominates the city, few date
palms thrust their crests above the
maze of flat 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
horde of small boats, a swirl of white
| draperies and bare legs. a babel of
voices, and the inevitable, wearying
stare of fierce. black eyes.
There may be a suspicion of pose
about it all, n lurking suggestion that
possibly Tangier has found the east
est way of making living is to be
Just a little more aggressively itself
than ever, but at first sight, it is as
truly oriental as even the out-of-the-
world cities down south, between the
ocean and the desert.
CHARLES SAxeY.