features so well defined or characteristic as those of the purer race; but the Moors are usually handsome, with pale oval faces and dark melancholy eyes. On the whole. they have a somewhat effeminate look.

The Arab and Moorish women are alike veiled, a striped

white shawl, called a haik, of coarser or finer material according to the position of the wearer, being thrown over the head, and concealing the whole person down to the feet, the face being hidden by a white linen handkerchief,

called an adjar, tied tightly across the nose, under the eyes.

The general effect is decidedly clumsy and ungraceful, especially with those Moorish women whose toilette beneath the haik is elaborate. In the street they present the appearance of animated clothes-bags, and walk with a curicus shuffling gait, very far removed from the unfettered dignity of their lords and masters. Their lives, poor things! are altogether in accord with their costume. They are not emancipated;" and though in the houses of the richer Moors the slavery of their women may be gilded, it is but slavery after all. The Mahomedan invariably buys his wife that is to say, he pays a price for her to her family, large or small according to her reputed beauty, or accomplishments as a housewife; and though when a girl is born to him an Arab laments, a man with many daughters, if he knows how to dispose of them well, in time becomes rich.

It is curious to observe how this custom of wife-buying is found among all semi-barbarous peoples. It has been laid on modern civilization to develop the notion of a dowrya notion which is certainly carried to its very fullest extent, by the nation which has made Algeria a French province. But the Arab, perhaps naturally, considers the wife for whom he has paid, very much in the same light as his horse or his ass-as very decidedly his chattel, to be driven and beaten, to fetch and carry, to work and toil, while the husband and master reclines at his ease, idly smoking his chibouck.

The French have done a good deal to improve the condition of the Arab woman, by exacting vengeance when any special act of ill-treatment comes to light. If you chance

to see an Arab prisoner marched through the streets by mounted soldiers, and are curious enough to inquire his offence, you will probably be told, "It is his wife he has been beating; they all do it, these Arabs." And then come the shrug and sneer, with which a Frenchman invariably speaks of a race with whom he has so little in common.

But the cases which thus come under public notice are naturally, only the most flagrant. A French writer on the subject says truly enough

"When an Arab woman marries she is sure only that she will be a slave; but who can tell how many domestic tortures, which no eye can see, or into whose mysteries the law never ventures to penetrate, she will have to endure?"

Islamism, though it places woman in a decidedly inferior position to man, does not, any more than Christianity, countenance these cruelties; but unhappily it is not only among Mahomedans and half-savage Arabs, that wifebeating and wife-murder are known to exist as national crimes !

The secluded position and complete ignorance of the Arab woman, add to the difficulties which surround any attempt to ameliorate her condition, but it is a hopeful sign that women are found to avail themselves of the strong arm of the law against unusual oppression, in spite of the disrepute among their own people, which such a proceeding naturally entails.

A curious anecdote is told àpropos of this subject. An Arab chieftain had occasion to travel to Constantine on business, and bade an affectionate farewell to his family. In a few days he returned in a state of great excitement, and, calling his favourite wife from the tent, bade her fetch

him four posts and a cord. To the woman's horror he seized her, lashed her to the stakes, and began savagely beating her. Her cries attracted a crowd of villagers.

"What has she done?" asked one.

"She, the best of wives and mothers, the pearl of the tribe!" exclaimed another.

At length, the infuriated man stopped to explain, that at Constantine he had seen an Arab woman accuse her husband before the court of ill-usage; and the Cadi, backed by the French authorities, had actually given a judgment in her favour!

"All men are insulted through this woman!" exclaimed the chieftain; "and I am but relieving my mind, and assuring myself that I, at least, am master in my own family."

Happily these prejudices are to a certain extent giving way, and some of the more intelligent and less bigoted Arabs, who have observed how much better is the social position of the wife among Europeans, have made it a point that their daughters should be married according to French law, a course which not only secures to them a certain amount of legal protection, but also prevents them from having any legitimate rival in the affections of their husbands.

Arab women, unlike the men, are small, and not as a rule good-looking, except when very young. Their noses appear to become flattened by the constant use of the adjar, and their faces are very colourless from the same reason. It is a curious fact that this disguise was unknown among Arab women, until the time of Mahomet's marriage with his young and beautiful wife Ayesha, as to whose conduct, indeed, it became needful for the angel Gabriel to make a

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special communication, before the Prophet's uneasiness could be removed. The jealousy of one man has been powerful enough to cover the faces of all Moslem wives and daughters for twelve hundred years, and etiquette's stern laws, adding their weight to religion's teaching, still forbid any decent Mahomedan woman to show any portion of her face, but her eyes.

"Young Arab and Moorish women, we may remark, cover the face because they are ordered to do so; the old find it a convenient policy, for like charity, the veil covers many defects.”—Algeria as It Is.

Surely there is compensation in all human woes, and Mahomet was, after all, but a bungling tyrant, when he veiled flat noses and coarse mouths, only to display to still greater advantage, the one special charm and glory of Arab beauty! In some parts of Algeria, where it is to be supposed jealousy reigns rampant, the women, even the poorest, are only allowed to show one eye, and have to make their way through the world—often encumbered with heavy burdens as best they may, crab-fashion.

But in Algiers itself, custom is not so severe; the adjar is sometimes observed to be of the very thinnest material, so that the shape, at least, of the features can be discerned. beneath it; and the eyes are permitted to do their work of fascination without obstruction.

The effect of the soft black eyes which look out above the adjar, is rather spoiled by the practice of tattooing the forehead, and also that of extending the eyebrows, so as to meet in one line; but the eyes themselves are almost always large and beautiful, and have, for the most part, the tender wistful look of some dumb animal in them.