The sunshine in this land is wonderful; at seven in the morning it is so brilliant that we cannot bear the reflection from the chalky housetops, and recover the use of our eyesight only when in the dark and narrow corridors that serve the Tangerines in lieu of streets. The thoroughfare which every visitor must traverse when going from the hotel to the great or lesser market-places, is distinctly banal in aspect. It is the leading shopping street of the European residents; its shops are stuffed with canned provisions, patent-medicines, and playing-cards, while a saloon or two make known their presence, even to the blind, by strong gin-like aromas wafted thence. When lost in the labyrinthine maze of Moorish Tangier, the foreigner has but to follow his nose to reach the place where rum and brandy are on sale, and European civilization well in evidence. Then he may emerge into the lesser market-place, or "Soko," as it is called in local speech. Here he finds one tiny French cafe and the postal stations of England, Spain, and France; for as Morocco's postal-service is on a par with its other governmental enterprises, these nations each maintain post-offices in Tangier and an elaborate courier service in the interior. European mails now penetrate to Fez, even to Mequinez and Morocco City, with tolerable dispatch and certainty.
TANGIER
THE WHITE CITY OF THE STRAITS
THE STREET OF EUROPEAN SHOPS
While we refresh ourselves at the cafe, we are amused by the ape-like antics of a negro from the far-away province of Suss. His wig of wool is hung with shells and teeth and nails, all of which clatter as he dances to the music of a pair of iron castanets.
But he cannot compare in picturesqueness with this other visitor—a superb representative of the saintly beggar class. So imposing a revelation of dignity in rags it is not possible to find among men of any other race or creed. We learn that this haughty mendicant is crazy; that in Morocco, insanity is the most valuable asset of those who desire to engage in what European residents irreverently term the "saint business." The Moors are convinced that if the mind of a man inhabit not his body, it is because God, having discerned in that mind much beauty of holiness, retains it in paradise as a thing too precious to be sent with the man to earth. Therefore great consideration should be shown for the mortal coil pertaining to that mind. Thus "crazy" has become a synonym for "sanctified," and an insane man has but to mumble prayers, and watch his saner fellow-citizens vie with one another in propitiating him with gifts and offerings. But sometimes this insanity is only feigned, and some of these weird characters are in reality agents of the militant Moslem brotherhoods of Tripoli and Tunis, charged with the spreading of a Mohammedan propaganda and the keeping alive of bitter anti-Christian agitation.
