TANGIER.

Otago Witness, Issue 1891, 1 May 1890, Page 31

TANGIER.

PECTJLIAKITIES OF THE MOORISH CITY. President Gilman, of the John Hopkins University, writes to the Baltimore Sun from Morocco : What is there to see in Tangier 1 And why do American tourists, after " the run through Spain," think it quite essential to visit the Barbary Ooa&t 1 I can answer for one party. A sagacious friend, who recently went from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Bosphorus, said to us before we left home : " You will see nothing more purely Oriental than Tangier in all your proposed journey." Certainly we have found the place so completely foreign to all our ideas that only the old-fashioned word "outlandish" seems adequate to describe it. Here is the most western of all the seaports of Northern Africa, lying within sight of the coast of Spain and the Eock of Gibraltar, a place of 16,000 inhabitants, upon whose ways of life and thought European Christian civilisation has scarcely made an impression. Yet more than 200 years ago this city for a short period belonged to the English crown. It is now the residence of those foreign ministers who are accredited to the Sultan of Morocco. It is in almost daily communication with France, Spain, and Gibraltar, both England and Spain maintaining post offices, with separate bureaus, stamps, and mail bags. There are newspapers published here in English and Spanish. The Hotel Continental is so good that there is a current mot to the effect that the best hotel in Europe may be found in Africa. The English come here at certain seasons for sport, the particular attraction lieing the cbase of wild boars, for which a manual of " hog-sticking " has been elaborately set forth. Yet, notwithstanding all this, the Moors and the Jews go on in their old-fashioned ways as if they were living in the fifteenth century. Indeed it is easy to believe that we see in Tangier much of the same sort of life which prevailed in Southern Spain 400 years ago — before the conquest of Granada — with one important qualification : Tangier ha=? nothing which suggests the learning, the science, the arts, or even the sicredness of the great cities of Andalusia when Moorish sway was dominant. The Arabic or Mahoramedan dominion, without the Arabic enlightenment, loses all the charm which is suggested by what is even now seen in Cordova, Granada, and Seville. Nevertheless, Tangier is full of such beautiful objects of Moorish art as pleasing arches and mural sculpture, tiles of exquisite colours and innumerable designs, rugs and curtains of the choicest colour and finest wool, delicate tapestries and embroideries, brass lamps adorned with brilliant knobs of glass or even of precious stones, and brass trays cut like the sharp edges of cut glass, placques of porcelain in tins and patterns of unusual charm. When all these are seen, as they may be in the houses of the cultivated foreigners in Tangier, all that is disagreeable is forgotten. Add Moorish music ; let the fragrance of incense lise from the censer; let servants in Moorish costumes move silently about, offering refreshments, and it is easy to perceive what charms there may be in Oriental luxury. One of the wittiest remarks about Tangier that has come under my eye was made bj Mr Spence-Watson in his story of a visit to Wazan in 1879. " Tangier," he says, "is a happy mixture of the Old Testament and the 'Arabian Nights,' with the gilding somewhat faded." I will not try to describe the manners and customs of the Tangerines. We had a good opportunity to observe them, for we visited the market late on Wednesday, when camels, mules, donkeys, men and women were bringing their goods to town, and again on Thursday, when all the inhabitants seemed to be engaged in buying and selling. We strolled up and down the streets; also looking inside the open portals at the various artisans who work in public, the weaver, the braz'er, the basket maker, the shoemaker, the saddler, and the tinker. Neither sights nor sounds nor smelb were rewaiding. Most pitiable of all the sights are the women, clad in dirty, coarse white gowns, hiding eveiy portion of their figures, the eyes and the ankles ex-

'3*"*

"" — — r cepted. Their heavy burdens and their clumsy steps betrayed the habitudes of drudges". All that is known of their lives confirms the impression of their degradation and misery.