THE GREAT MOSQUE, CONSTANTINA.
The worst attribute of these khouans is, that after having excited the ignorant Kabyles to many a losing war by their magnetism, they remain themselves behind the curtain, safe and sarcastic.
In the Moorish quarter of Constantina, where the streets are about five feet wide, you sit down to watch the perpetual come-and-go of the inhabitants. Taking a cup of fragrant coffee—which, as the reader knows, is in Eastern countries eaten at the same time that it is drunk—you sit on a stone bench of the coffee-house and contemplate mules, horses, asses, passengers, buyers, sellers, loungers, Arabs, Turks, Kabyles, Jews, Moors and spahis. On every side you hear the cry of "Balek! balek!" This means "Look out!" and the word is closely followed by the causative fact. The street is unpaved, the horse is unshod, the hoofs cannot be heard, and you have hardly time to efface yourself against a wall when a cavalier passes by like a careless torrent, scattering the white bornouses centrifugally from his pathway as he advances. The streets, as we observed, are very narrow. Each has its own manufacture. Here are the tailors; here, in this deafening alley, are the blacksmiths; farther on are the shoemakers, and you are driven mad with wonder at the quantities of slippers made for a people which goes eternally barefoot. Springing out of this dædal intricacy of booths and workshops rise the slender minarets of prayer, of which the principal one belongs to a mosque said to be the most beautiful in Algeria. The interior of this chief mosque is not deprived of ornament, having its columns of pink marble, its elliptical Moorish arches, and its tiles of painted fayence set in the walls. In the centre is the pulpit, coarsely painted red and blue, where the imaum recites his prayers. Three small, lofty windows are filled with carved lacework. The floor is spread with carpets for the knees of the rich, with matting for the poor. Over all rises the square, crescent-crowned minaret—no belfry, but a steeple where the chimes are rung by the human voice. Night and day, from the heights of their slender towers, the muezzins toll out their vibrating notes like a bell, inviting the faithful to prayers with the often-heard signal: "Allah ill' Allah: Mohammed resoul Allah!"
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
THE NATIONAL TRANS-ALLEGHANY WATER-WAY.
VIEW OF NEW RIVER.
The offices of running water have afforded a fertile theme for the poet and the philosopher. In the ruder ages of the world the water-ways which carve their course over the face of the globe were regarded only in the light of natural barriers against hostile invasion; and thus arose the historic principle—