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which were used as pockets for handkerchiefs, flat pincushions, scissors and sewing materials. They wore no corset and their drawers did not show beneath the dress, and their bare feet were thrust into babouches of leather embroidered in gold and sil­ver. Babouches are slippers, the fore part only used; the back part is mashed flat to the sole by the heel. Their hair was twisted up carelessly and bound with bands of tinsel and beads, with fresh flowers stuck here and there. They are very fond of fresh flowers, and have them about in quantities. One was seated on the floor, sorting out a large bunch which had just been brought in, and she seemed to be in an ecstacy of delight over the roses. Tangiers is a paradise of flowers. We met at the palace two young American ladies, doctors or medical students, from the Presbyterian mission, and through them we carried on our conversation. They told us of the great suffering among the women from the utter neglect of good medical attendance. They came to the palace to see particularly the widow of the old pasha, who was a very great suf­ferer. She was always glad to receive them, and hearing from them that our party was in the palace, she sent for us to pay her a visit. They told us she was a very good woman, and had been a beauty, but we could see no vestige remaining. She was a perfect wreck.

The house was a two-story one, as are most of the houses in Tangiers. Some of the second stories had windows on the street, and the women seemed as free to look from them as we were at the gentlemen of our party, who were awaiting us in the street below, but they did not appear to care to look. I suppose they would have felt obliged to muffle their faces, as this is apparently a matter of self-respect with them. There, then, within four walls these women passed their lives, sewing, embroidering, or idling their days away amid sweets and flowers. I saw not a sign of a book. I was very anxious to see the inside of an ordinary Moorish house, and through the American consul I was enabled to do so. We were taken by a Moorish employe of the consulate to see several interiors. They were all alike in a general way, made of stone and stucco, with horse-shoe arches, two stories, the rooms around a court open to the sky, the lower story without windows, very little wood used about them, no doors but the heavy one at the entrance, and portieres everywhere. All were furnished alike, but more or less richly, the bed of brass or iron at one end of the room, the walls covered with hangings of silk or cloth, the floor with marble or earthen tiles, no chairs, ward­robes or tables, only divans or cushions against the wall, where ladies sat doing noth­ing but fanning themselves. They received us politely everywhere, bidding us wel­come, and smiling as if gratified at our visit. At last we came to the house of a Moor­ish merchant, who had been warned of our coming, as our guide was a friend of his. We were in the midst of the Ramadan week or feast, corresponding to the Christian Easter, coming at the end of forty days’ rigorous fast, like the Christian Lent. Everybody was in holiday attire. We had been astonished to notice that our male guide was allowed to enter everywhere, to see the ladies face to face without veils. I judge by this that the veil or drapery stands in the same light as our bonnets or hats.

At the merchant’s house we were received at the door by the host and led to a room (our guide with us), where we found his young wife, seated on alow divan running around the room. He was about fifty years of age and very dark. She was young and fair, and his only wife. I found that although Mohammedans, at least the Moors, are permitted several wives, they usually have but one, and make good and careful husbands. The lady was a lovely woman, a light brunette, with magnificent eyes and rounded limbs. She was dressed most elaborately in splendid material, and received us courteously and gracefully—indeed, her whole bearing bore the stamp of highest breeding. No grand duchess, reared amid the ceremonials of a court, could have been a grander, statelier lady. Her style of dress was the same as that of the pasha’s ladies, but of thinner muslins and silks, gold embroidered and woven. She wore large jeweled ear-rings, and necklaces reaching from the throat to the waist, formed of string after string of gold beads, jewel set, and pearls. On the bare arms, coming from wide flowing sleeves, were several bracelets. On her head she wore a circlet of

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