American Boys Afloat by Oliver Optic

The party from the Guardian-Mother continued their walk towards the upper town till they came to a large square, which was laid out with lime and orange trees, and surrounded by the best buildings in the town, which were in European style. Captain Ringgold found a hotel there of considerable size, which he entered, and presently returned with a guide who spoke English and Arabic.

"This is the Place Royale," replied this man in answer to a question.

"You have all sorts of people here," said the commander. "Are there many English here?"

"Very few English and Americans; only once in a while one who comes to look at the city."

"Most of the nations seem to be represented here."

"Arabs, Moors, Jews, French, Spaniards, Germans, Italians, Maltese, and Turks," added the guide. "That street is Bab-el Ouad, and a little farther is Bab-azoun, two of the best streets in the city; and they are very fine."

"They are built like the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, with colonnades on each side; but they are very narrow, like the streets of most Spanish and Oriental cities. Bab means street, I take it," said the captain, as the party stopped to look down the first of the two streets. "When the sun is hot that would be a very comfortable place to walk."

After the party had spent an hour in the Place Royale, with a short walk in the Bab-el Ouad, the guide conducted them up a narrow and irregular street to the upper town, where the scene became vastly more interesting because it was novel and strange.

"I should think we were back in Mogadore," said Mrs. Belgrave, the only Oriental city she or any of the other passengers had ever seen, and every person and object commanded their attention.

The people of this section were nearly all Mohammedans, and the few women they saw were veiled. Most of them were fat and dumpy, for obesity is a chief attraction in an Oriental belle. The Nubians were jet black, but they were as closely veiled as those who were whiter. Many mosques were in sight all the time, and the commander spoke to the guide about them.

"There are one hundred mosques and marabouts in the city," said he.

"What are marabouts? " asked the captain, and all the others were gathered around him to hear what was said; and the natives gazed at them as much in wonder as the tourists at the strange sight before them.

"A marabout is a tomb, or the sanctuary of a saint, and some of them are very elegant edifices."

"What is this in front of us?"

"That is a _mesjid_, which means a second-class mosque, as you Americans would say. The principal ones are called _djamas_, and some of them are very elegant. The tomb of a dey or a very rich pacha is often exceedingly fine."

"The houses here are very queer, Mr. Belgrave," said Miss Blanche; "but they are like those we saw in Mogadore, and not at all like those in the lower town."

"That is a French town, and I saw two or three buildings five and six stories high. They have earthquakes here, and I should rather be in one of these Moorish houses than on the sixth floor of one of those lofty structures," replied Louis, who had read up a little as soon as he returned to the ship. "These dwellings all have flat roofs, Miss Blanche. Do you know why that is so?"

"So that the rain can get into them, I should suppose," replied the beautiful maiden; and not only the French but the Moors had paused to get a second look at her.

"Hardly for that; but as soon as the sun has gone down, in the cool of the evening, the people pass their time on the roof. I read some stories by a French writer who had spent some time in Algeria, and he speaks of passing his evenings on the roof of the house he had hired, a Moorish house in Bougie, on the seashore."

"These houses have no windows, as we understand the word," said Blanche, who was taking in all the strange sight before her. "They are nothing but peek-holes, with iron bars, which make them look like so many prisons."