Perhaps the best spots for quiet work are the precincts of the Marabouts' tombs, where we can take refuge unobserved, behind some old wall and return quietly to the same spot, day after day. And here, as one experience of sketching from Nature, let us allude to the theory (laid down pretty confidently by those who have never reduced it to practice), that one great advantage of this climate is, that you may work at the same sketch from day to day, and continue it where you left off! You can do nothing of the kind. * If your drawing is worth anything, it will at least have recorded something of the varying phases of light and shade, that really alter every hour.

Let us take an example. About six feet from us, at eight o'clock in the morning, the sheer white wall of a Moslem tomb is glowing with a white heat, and across it are cast the shadows of three palm-leaves, which at a little distance, have the contrasted effect of the blackness of night. ** Approach a little nearer and examine the real colour of these photographic leaf-lines, shade off (with the hand) as much as possible of the wall, the sky, and the reflected light from surrounding leaves, and these dark shadows become a delicate pearl grey, deepening into mauve, or partaking sometimes of the tints of the rich earth below them. They will be deeper yet before noon, and pale again, and uncertain and fantastic in shape, before sundown. If we sketch these shadows only each hour, as they pass from left to right upon the wall (laying down a different wash for the ground each time) and place them side by side in our note-book, we shall have made some discoveries in light and transparent shadow tone, which will be very valuable in after time. No two days or two hours, are under precisely the same atmospheric conditions; the gradations and changes are extraordinary, and would scarcely be believed in by anyone who had not watched them.

* We are speaking, of course, of colour and effect, not of
details that may be put in at any time.
** Under some conditions of the atmosphere we have obtained
more perfect outlines of the leaves of the aloe, with their
curiously indented edges and spear-points, from their
shadows, rather than from the leaves themselves.

Thus, although we cannot continue a sketch once left off, to any purpose, we may obtain an infinite and overwhelming variety of work in one day, in the space of a few yards by the side of some old well or Marabout's tomb.

We seldom returned from a day in the country, without putting up for an hour or two at one of the numerous cafés, or caravanserai, built near some celebrated spring, with seats, placed invitingly by the roadside, under the shade of trees. There were generally a number of Arabs and French soldiers collected in the middle of the day, drinking coffee, playing at dominoes, or taking a siesta on the mats under the cool arcades, and often some Arab musicians, who hummed and droned monotonous airs; there were always plenty of beggars to improve the occasion, and perhaps, a group of half-naked boys, who would get up an imitation of the 'Beni Zouzoug Arabs,' and go through hideous contortions, inflicting all kinds of torments on each other for a few sous.

[Original]

It is pleasant to put up at one of these cafés during the heat of the day, and to be able to walk in and take our places quietly amongst the Arabs and Moors, without any particular notice or remark; and delightful (oh! how delightful) to yield to the combined influences of the coffee, the hachshish, the tomtom and the heat, and fall asleep and dream—dream that the world is standing still, that politics and Fenianism are things of the past, and that all the people in a hurry are dead. Pleasant, and not a little perplexing too, when waking, for the eye to rest on the delicate outline of a little window in the wall above, which, with its spiral columns and graceful proportions, seems the very counterpart in miniature of some Gothic cathedral screen.

If we examine it, it is old and Moorish (these buildings date back several hundred years), and yet so perfect is its similarity to later work, that our ideas on orders of architecture become confused and vague. We may not attempt to discover the cause of the similarity, or indeed to go deeply into questions of 'style,' but we may be tempted to explore further, and if we examine such cafés (as, for instance, those at El Biar, or Birkadem), we shall find the walls ornamented with Arabesques, sometimes half-concealed under whitewash, and the arcades and conical-domed roofs and doorways covered with curious patterns.