such numbers that they have the appearance of groves. The barber's shops are places of general rendezvous. They are surrounded by benches, on which the idle, the inquisitive, and the customer seat themselves; and when the benches are filled, the people sit on the floor. Itinerant showmen, dancers, and story-tellers often come into the towns; and crowds assemble to gaze on the former, and listen to the extraordinary narrations of the last.

The most singular of these itinerant exhibitors are the serpent-eaters. They entice two different kinds of serpents, the bite of which is known to be mortal, put them in a cane basket, and carry them about the country. They take them out, play with them, and suffer them to twist about their bodies, without receiving any injury. It must be owned that they make the poor animals a most ungrateful return for their familiarity and forbearance; for they frequently devour them alive, while the blood is streaming down their clothes.

Idiots and lunatics are fed and clothed in Marocco, wherever they wander, and are sometimes loaded with presents. A Moor might almost with equal safety insult the emperor; as these people are supposed to be under the especial protection of heaven, and even divinely inspired. If prejudice must prevail among men, it here assumes an amiable form. In my own country the voice and hand of every boy, who can reach him is raised against the unfortunate man who is destitute of reason. I have seen him irritated by taunts, and goaded to desperation.

Itinerant doctors travel through the country, to administer to the sick, when such can be found.

Their surgical apparatus, which they carry on their shoulder in a leathern bag, consists of a lancet, a scarifying knife, and a caustic knife, the last of which is used in the cure of all wounds..

The arts in Marocco are few, and one profession is, among the Moors, equal to another. No person is ashamed of exercising a useful trade; and the governor of a town gives his daughter to a tradesman, without imagining that he degrades himself.

We shall cease to wonder, if we have wondered, at the negro providing his deceased relative with servants to attend him in the next world, or inclosing provisions in the grave for his use on his journey thither; when we are told that the people of Marocco bury gold and silver here, in the expectation of possessing it hereafter. A part of their riches is thus laid up as a treasure for futurity; another part is expended in jewels and rich apparel for the ladies of their family, whom they take a pleasure in seeing sumptuously clothed; and, if they act up to the dictates of their religion, a tenth part of their property is given to the poor.

The bodies of the dead are washed, laid on a wooden tray, and covered with cotton or lawn. They are buried at the hour of prayer, and never kept a night in the house, unless the deceased expired after sun-set. The dead are not buried among the living; the cemetery being always an uninclosed piece of ground without the town. The body is carried to the mosque by those going to prayer, each, in his turn, being desirous to perform this office; and it is laid in the ground with the feet towards Mecca, that it may rise with the

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face towards the prophet's tomb.

Women go regularly every Friday to weep over the remains of those they held dear; and others, as they pass the burying-places, pray for the dead.

When a woman loses her husband, she mourns four months and eight days; or if she be pregnant, till she be brought to bed: during this period, the relations of her late husband are obliged to support her. Among the great, a son mourns for his father by not shaving his head or any part of his beard, and by not paring his nails; neglect of external appearance being considered as a greater proof of sorrow than the colour of the clothing.

The Jews form about a seventh part of the population of the walled towns in Marocco. They possess neither lands nor gardens; they wear a particular dress, to distinguish them from the other inhabitants, and if they pass a mosque or sanctuary, they walk barefooted. The lowest Moor imagines that he has a right to insult a Jew, and the Jew dares not defend himself. But, more artful, and more industrious than the Moors, the Jews profit by their situations as agents, brokers, coiners of money, and receivers of the customs, and by the various trades they exercise; and console themselves for the oppression and indignities they suffer, by the wealth acquired by their application and cunning.

A Jew, of the city of Marocco, appeared one day at the audience of the Sultan in a European dress of scarlet and gold. The Sultan, believing him to be a Christian ambassador, sent to enquire what nation he represented; and, on finding that he was a Jew, he ordered his gay habit to be torn

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from him, and the black burnose, the garment prescribed by law to the people of his nation, to be put in its place; he was then driven out of the court with kicks and buffetings, for having practised a deception upon the Sultan.

Jewesses walk the streets unveiled; but they are obliged to walk with their feet unveiled also, and to prostrate themselves even before the black women who belong to Muhamedans. Many of the Jewesses are perfect beauties; and it is said that their fathers know how to turn their beauty to account, in their dealings with the Moors.

When a Jew dies, the friends and female relations assemble round the corpse, making hideous lamentations, the women tearing their faces with their nails. When the body is removed, all outward expression of sorrow ceases; and brandy changes the screams of mourning to the vociferation of mirth.

There is yet another people in Marocco; I mean the Slaves. These are all Pagan negroes brought from the countries of Sudan by the kafilahs that traverse the Sahara. No man who is able to read the Koran can be a slave in a Muhamedan country. The slaves in Marocco are the domestic servants, and their state of servitude is sufficiently easy. Many have their liberty given them after seven years servitude; and some have been known to refuse it, when offered, choosing rather to remain with their masters.

The black men who have regained their liberty live by their labours. They have no wealth to expose them to the extortions of the government; they are cheerful and gay; they amuse themselves with dancing and singing, and he is most admired

who can perform the best. They intermarry with each other, and, commonly, after harvest, when they are sure of a subsistence. The first preparation for the wedding is to carry corn to the mill sufficient to last a whole year. This is accompanied with songs, drums, and castanets; and two days after they go, with the same ceremonies, to receive the flour. The household furniture consists of a mat, two sheep-skins with the wool on, a lamp, a jar of oil, and some earthen pots. These are carried in procession like the corn.

I groan in spirit when I compare the servitude of black people among the Moors with their slavery among Christians; the former a state in which freedom has been refused; the latter such as to make freedom a dangerous boon. We have here an interesting picture of liberated negroes, when they have nothing to resent and nothing to fear.

There is a scourge that visits Marocco, and leaves famine and pestilence in its track. This is the locust. It is of the same form as the grasshopper, about three inches and a half long; when young it is green; as it grows it becomes of a yellower hue; and lastly it is brown. The body is eaten, and resembles that of a prawn.

Locusts proceed from the Desert. They follow their sultan, who is said to be larger, and more beautifully coloured than the rest, and they proceed with as much regularity as a disciplined army on its march. They destroy all vegetation on the ground; then the leaves, then the bark of trees. At a distance they appear like an immense cloud, darkening the sun; at hand, they fly in the face of the traveller, settle on his hands and clothes, and are so thick upon the ground as to cover his