Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/502

 blinding dust. In these quarters of the old town the inhabitants themselves present as great a diversity of types as do their quaint and rickety dwellings. Egyptians and Nubians, Arabs and Negroes, jostle each other in the narrow lanes, selling their wares, crowding about the hucksters’ shops, or collecting in picturesque

groups round about some noted story-teller. But the most shifting scenes of this strange panorama, the most varied types and costumes, are to be seen chiefly in the Muski and other streets in the neighbourhood of the bazaar, where the direct traffic is carried on between the natives and Europeans. Here veiled women, Mussulmans or Copts, glide rather than walk silently by, moving heaps of clothes, with nothing