their eyeballs from the socket, and replace them without apparent injury or discomfort; but this, the most horrifying and disgusting of all the exhibitions, is reserved for grand occasions, and only takes place when a great "star" sheds his light upon the scene. All the performances are more or less disgusting and savage, none having the smallest approach to the picturesque, except, perhaps, a kind of wild fire dance, during which a man bare to the waist, or covered only by a light muslin shirt, scorches and flays his whole body, with what appears to be a bunch of burning gorse or heather. He introduces it under his muslin shirt, and knocks it about his shoulders very rapidly, until he really looks as though he were wrapped in a sheet of flame, from the midst of which his dark form stands out with a fine effect of light and shadow. As, too, the muslin shirt suffers no ill from the fire, the safety of the performer does not seem greatly endangered.

These exhibitions, which are usually a Sabbath (Friday) evening relaxation, go on through the whole night, each performer continuing his vagaries, always to the ceaseless and monotonous sound of the barbaric tom-toms and cymbals, until he literally falls exhausted

"Wearing out life in his religious whim,

Till his religious whimsey wears out him."

He is usually restored by a kind of kneading process administered with the hands and feet by the mokkadem; and while another maniac dancer takes his place, he settles himself down among the spectators, apparently none the worse for his late exertions. The Aïssaoui fête is an exhibition which certainly few would care to see twice, but in its modified form it may be found interesting as a specimen, or

MOORISH Weddings.

271

perhaps it may be fairer to say, as a relic of a barbaric religious service. Mahmoud, the interpreter of the Hôtel d'Orient, is always ready to inform visitors of any native festivities such as Aïssaoui fêtes, marriages, &c., which may be on hand, and to which foreigners may obtain admittance.

Marriage ceremonies, to which ladies alone are admitted since all the festivities take place in the women's apartments, are, when genuine, sufficiently interesting; but the natives are accused-with what justice it is difficult to say— of getting up sham performances of this kind, for the benefit of the wealthy European who is willing to pay for the show. Marriage festivities among the Arabs last a week, during which time the chief amusement is the eating of sweetmeats and the dressing, bejewelling, dyeing, painting, and generally adorning of the bride, who is, as a rule, a girl of some thirteen or fourteen years old, and who is compelled to sit idle and immovable the whole time without showing the slightest interest in anything. She has probably never seen, and has certainly never been seen by, the bridegroom. At the conclusion of the ceremonies the bridegroom is introduced to the women's apartments, and permitted to raise his bride's veil, but etiquette obliges the lady to keep her eyes tightly closed on the occasion, and in some cases the unfortunate young woman's eyelashes are gummed down to her cheeks, to save the possibility of an indiscreet glance. If the face of the bride is displeasing to the bridegroom, he is at liberty after this one glance to reject her. If, on the contrary, he is satisfied, he drinks a few drops of scented water from the bride's hand, offers her the same from his, and the marriage is concluded.

The Arabs and Moors have no kind of public spectacle such as European nations delight in. They have no notion of the drama, and a kind of pantomimic performance in vogue before the conquest, has been, on account of its indecency, suppressed by the French. Story-telling and the recitation of poems are the chief amusements of the native assemblies, to which is sometimes added a dance of Almées, or negresses. These women belong to one particular tribe in the desert, and are considered of the lowest possible caste.

This entertainment is very much of the same kind as the Aïssaoui performance, without its horrifying and painful accompaniments. It is held like the Aïssaoui revel in the open courtyard of one or other of the quaint Moorish houses, the centre of which is reserved for the dancers and the negro musicians, the space beneath the arches being crowded with male spectators, and the galleries furnished as before with ghostly veiled women.

The negro music is, if anything, wilder than the Arab, and would produce who can tell what sensations in the breast of a poetic Frenchman? The negro has several instruments peculiar to himself, of which a kind of guitar or banjo is one; but through all, the great tom-toms, beaten with bent sticks, have the most prominent place, and seem, judging from the broad unchanging grin on the black faces of the executants, to afford an intense delight to the drummer.

A recent artist-traveller gives the following description of

the scene:

“The negresses at first were very slow and irregular in their movements, then, joining in a ring, they swayed and changed places with more and more excitement and rapidity as the tune led them, after a

while falling away, to give one negress, who was a lithe and graceful figure, a more commanding position. She was dressed with more taste than the rest, and had an air of conscious superiority, but there seemed no endeavour on the part of any of the dancers to move with lightness of step; on the contrary, the naked feet beat with distinctness on the marble pavement of the court.

66

Monotony is avoided in many ways.

Sometimes two or three of

the women dance with long spears in their hands, Amazonian fashion ; at other times great use is made of a light drapery, probably to give the figures some appearance of angelic lightness; at others, a kind of dumb show is indulged in, with very beautiful grouping of figures and arrangement of dress, the dumb show having reference to the money which is contributed by the spectators for the entertainment, and received by one of the musicians. At one time the dancer would be seated on the marble pavement, the lower part of the body moving most wondrously to the music; at another, a curious and painful mode was to move the head only, and that with great rapidity and for a considerable time, until the performer looked like a person epileptic.

"The whole entertainment is more or less savage; but as the lamplight leaps to the beat of the drum, as musicians and dancers alike work themselves up into an ecstasy of wide-mouthed joy, as the general excitement increases, the variety of positions and colours of the drapery, the dancing centre, the crowded and more or less delighted audience, the picturesqueness of the architecture, the half gloom, the flickering lamp-light on the enclosed foliage, the moonlight and starlight, the shrieks of pleasure from the upper balconies, the tremendous noise and occasional fury, render the scene most unique."-J. W. Inchbold.

When the dancers are weary, they are refreshed by holding the naked feet over a brazier of incense, and sometimes by what is familiarly known among schoolboys, as cold pig.

The sacrifice of a calf, which is cooked and eaten on the premises, usually finishes the day's amusement, for the negro dance, unlike the Aïssaouan, does not shrink from daylight, but generally begins in the morning, and is on some occasions, carried on with scarcely any intermission for seven days and nights, by perpetual relays of musicians and dancers.

CHAPTER XVI.

L'AGHA.-FONTAINE-BLEUE.-MUSTAPHA INFÉRIEUR. -THE ARAB CEMETERY.-THE JARDIN D'ESSAI.

THE

"Fondly in thought I wing my flight

Back to those groves and gardens bright."

Moore.

route, and

HE tramway cars starting from the Place du Gouvernement follow the whole of this beyond to Hussein Dey and the Ruisseau, and will be found very useful, clean, and comfortable. From the Boulevard de la République turn to the left, into the Route de Constantine, a broad new road, the high colonnaded houses of which are only just beginning to be built, and where a solitary palm-tree, its trunk imprisoned beneath the pavement, lifts its head with an air of melancholy grandeur, half defying and half submitting to, the new order of things-a desert-captive pining in the fetters of civilization, and slowly fading away like the race of which it is a symbol, before the onslaught of European energy. Just before passing the city gate, the Bab-Azoun, or, as it is sometimes called, the Passage de Constantine, a steep little lane of only a few yards, leads up to the English church, the front of which is in the Rue d'Isly-on the upper Mustapha road; but on foot this is considerably the shorter way to