monuments. In the great mosque tower at Tlemcen, which resembles in many respects the three towers mentioned above, these shells are nearly circular in form, suggesting a transition to the rosette employed by later Moorish architects. The arabesques and dentilated ornaments surrounding the inner arches of the Casbah gateways are bold in design and have sufficient relief to cast shadows both crisp and decided. The opening of the arch in the interior gateway has been walled up and whitewashed. This wall is pierced with a grated window above and a door below, giving access to the prison of Rabat. It was at the time of the great famine when we first saw this monumental prison, and we questioned Hadj Ben Aissa, a Moor with a sense of humor, in regard to the diet of the prisoners. The idea of feeding prisoners at all seemed to strike him as irresistibly ludicrous. For "if they gave them anything to eat," said he, "all the people would be clamoring to get in." the feeling one has of isolation, and of being cut off from Europe by the perpetual menace of the bar; it is almost as if one had made the final voyage across the Styx, to begin a ruminative and impersonal existence in a silent land where few echoes from the world one has left ever find an entrance. One may easily please himself, if he so wills, by indulging in this fancy, and the illusion is strengthened by the silent, shrouded figures of the people. But once outside the walls of the V RABAT has a distinctive character of its own, besides being almost exclusively Moorish in its whitewashed solemnity, wherein it differs from most other coast towns, which all have a rather mongrel semiPortuguese aspect, with the exception of Saffi. This Moorish atmosphere is not altogether agreeable or salutary for the long residence of Europeans, being somewhat melancholy and suggestive of decay. The sad complexion of mind which grows upon one after being shut in for a length of time among the narrow lanes walled in by high buildings, so old that the oft-renewed layers of whitewash do not suffice to hide their mouldering decrepitude, is increased not a little by Door in Old House of Sid Bou Bekr (Morocco). Showing painted woodwork (doors) stucco, arabesque over doorway and old tile work. town there is an endless charm in the open brightness of the country, and for a painter, or one who has some purpose in being here, this is of itself a sufficient compensation. As a place of exile for the "Boulevardier," accustomed to the asphalt of New York or Paris, one cannot imagine any spot more unsympathetic, and there are pathetic records of French consuls and business agents who, not having the interest of an artist or an archæologist in their surroundings, went mad from sheer ennui, and invented ingenious and original methods of self-destruction. One whose lugubrious fancy had doubtless traversed the "Inferno" with Dante, buried himself to the neck in the sand at low water, and complacently awaited the rising of the tide; but he was discovered by some passing Moors and brought back to serve out his term of purgatory. But even the town itself is pervaded with the charm of color on bright mornings when the sunny side of the street is a dazzling glare of light, so reflected in the shadowed white wall across the way that it becomes lighter than the deep blue of the zenith-when every housetop or broken ledge of wall is fringed with fresh green herbage and tufts of brilliant yellow flowers. The very centre of life and movement and color is the riverside, the landing-place of the boats that ply across to the Sallee shore. The long main street of Rabat, which straggles off from the "marina," floored with flat circular millstones for much of its length, maintaining throughout a nearly parallel course to the river, turns sharply to the left near the water - gate at the end. Passing through the quarter of the dyers, who stand at their doors, with arms purple, violet, and crimson to the elbows, hanging up festoons of dripping woollen stuffs, wet and reeking from their malodorous vats, we descend a steep causeway down to the shore. Here we have to pick our way among green and fetid pools of filth, the drainage of the dyer's vats and the houses perched on the steep ledges above us. The broad river now lies before us, and the red, sandy shore opposite stretches away to the long walls of Sallee. The swiftly flowing current, full of eddies and swirls, reflects the varying tints of the sky, the steep bank of golden sand crowded with people, the black barges with their passengers and live-stock, suggesting a warp of changing azure crossed by threads of many colors. I Framed by the surrounding landscape -the lofty and solemn Hassan Tower on one side of the river, and on the other the glaring plain of sand dotted with moving figures in the direction of the gray walls of Sallee-this is one of the most animated spots in Morocco. must admit that it was not without some degree of trepidation that we approached Sallee for the first time, escorted by our soldier, a cavalry trooper of a severe and sour countenance; for the Bashaw had allowed us a permanent guard of honor, quite as if we had constituted a legation by ourselves. The people of Sallee, we were told, were in the habit of receiving the infidel stranger with volleys of stones; and the Spanish Consul had said, while he grew eloquent over the attractions of the place, that it would be out of the question to attempt any sketches there. On this first occasion we elected to go on foot, the better to dodge such stray missiles as might find their way in our direction, and the lady of our party of three, whose curiosity was stronger than her. discretion, refused to be left behind. As we trudged through the deep sand be tween half-picked skeletons-not of men, Kotubia Mosque Tower, Morocco. authoritative Moors cleared the streets for us, and there was always some sturdy bystander who volunteered to perform police duty. But the most interesting and characteristic corner of Sallee, the little square flanked by the two entrances of the Great Mosque, we dared not attempt, at least not until the eve of our departure, for we could not have stationed ourselves there for five minutes without raising a riot, and even those enlightened Moors who had taken our part would have turned against us had we committed such a sacrilege. There were two entrances to this mosque, at right angles with each other, on either side of the same corner in the square. Over these doors were massive cornices of carved wood, most elaborately wrought and evidently of great age. The colors, which still remain protected by the projecting portion above, are much obscured by dust and splashes of whitewash. The wall of the mosque within the left-hand door is covered with elaborate designs in stucco. There is a gateway in the city wall on the eastern side, between two square towers of fine proportions, but the opening is walled up and unapproachable from without, for a dense and impenetrable thicket of prickly pear has grown up around it. The road, which skirts the coast-line in the direction of Tangier, is spanned by an aqueduct of great height, built of massive blocks of stone; the road passes under three giant horsearches, and the yellow wall just over the fountain, on the left, is an extraordinary patchwork of color, spotted, stained, and variegated with tufts of brilliant green; a good-sized fig-tree grows from a buttress, under the spring of the arch, more than thirty feet from the ground, and projects across one of the arches. This imposing work is probably of more recent date than those just referred to, and is believed to have been built by Christian captives. Sallee, or Sla, as it is called in Moorish, once a Roman city, was conquered by the Goths, afterward by the Arabs; in 660 of the Hegira it was besieged and taken by the King of Castile, who massacred or deported the inhabitants to make room for Christians. He only held his conquest for ten days, when it was surprised and recaptured by Yacoub, first king of the house of Marin. In those remote days Sallee probably included Rabat and its suburb of Chella, and being the port of the Kingdom of Fez, it became, according to old chronicles, a very flourishing city, with all the "ornaments, qualities, and conditions necessary to make it an agreeable place of residence, and it was much frequented by foreign merchants, such as "Genoese, Venetians, Englishmen, and Flemings." VI ever saw a dead donkey," became a threadbare jest with us before we had passed many hours in this country. All these animals had perished from starvation months before, when the great exodus from the inland villages had taken place, and they had fallen as their strength gave out; for at that time scarcely a blade of grass could be found, and the few scattered straws left in the furrows after the last poor harvests could have yielded but little nourishment. But at the time of our visit the winter rains, the failure of which the year before had caused the famine, had already set in, and the roadsides, with the fields on either hand, were rich with flowers and fresh - springing grain. Long lines of walls, often parallel, stretch across the country in every direction, arching above the road and enclosing other waste and stony places similar to those which we have already traversed. In the last crumbling remnant of wall we came upon a magnificent gateway, giving entrance to the mausoleum of the dead sultans, and the sites of their fallen palaces.* I cannot remember in any country a more noble and beautiful portal, or any monument which gives a more vivid impression of age and loneliness, standing as it does on a desolate plateau swept by the winds from the Atlantic, and where the only vegetation is a clump of stunted palmettoes, marking the burial-place of some forgotten Moorish saint. Detail of Hassan Tower. A SANDY lane, hedged in by bluebladed aloes and prickly pears leads out to Chella, rather less than an hour's walk from the walls of Rabat. When first we set forth in search of the ruined city the road was bordered by a double line of dead and decaying beasts of burden, mere wrecks most of them, with their ribs half-buried in the red sand. The old saying, that "no man |