[9] “Empeño” means “a job.” The phrase is well understood throughout the Spains, and the practice much indulged in.
[11] The Germans are slowly but surely driving us out of the coast trade in Morocco. It may well be said of them that they are conquering the world with the trombone and the ophicleide, as the Romans did with the pick and shovel. Where these “bummel bands” once get a footing, their empire and all that, is sure to follow.
[12a] The Moriscos went to Tetuan, Fez, and Rabat, and in consequence the upper classes of all these cities are fairer in colour and more enlightened in mind than those of any other city of Morocco.
[12b] The others are Fez, Marakesh, and Mequinez. The system of an ambulatory capital also obtained formerly in Bolivia.
[13] Once looking at a steamer coming up London docks in a thick fog, I said to an aged shell-back standing near, “She looks very large somehow,” and received the answer, “Well, she do loom lofty in the mist.”
[14] Manigua is the Cuban name for a tropical forest.
[15a] Tagir means a merchant and is a highly honourable title in Mohammedan countries where the feudal system never made trade be looked down upon. “Caballer,” i.e. Caballero, is a more modern and, so to speak, gentleman-like appellation.
[15b] Perhaps a kind of Plica Polonica, or perhaps the “scald” of the Middle Ages, as when Chaucer says to his scribe who did not correct his proofs, “Under they long lockes mayst thou have the scald.”
[15c] Taifa is the Arabic word for a company or following. It is generally applied contemptuously, as in the phrase “Reyezuelos de Taifas,” used by the Spaniards during the time the Moors were in Spain to designate the Kings of Almeria, Ocsonoba, Huesca, and other small Principalities.
[16] Celestina, Tragi-Comedia de Calisto y Melibea por Rodrigo de Cota, Juan de Mera or some one else unknown.