Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/32

 CHAPTER III

THE PRIMITIVE RACES OF THE NORTH

E left the Balear without a tinge of regret and were soon in our hotel, elaborating a plan for visiting the different parts of the city.

We soon discovered that, aside from this revelation of the marked difference in the psychology of the Spanish and French colonizations, Oran possesses nothing uniquely distinctive or particularly interesting. First of all, there are no real Arabs in the town, as I cantiot accept as such the black gentlemen wearing French shoes from Raoul and fantastically large trousers with vests and coats to match, even though they do sport bournouses and extraordinarily high, large hats of multicolored straw. Moreover, they get drunk in the bars and small cafes on aniseed brandy.

The miserable Arab quarter of the town, the so-called "village nègre," with its small, low and terribly dirty, evil-smelling houses and its miniature maidcet-place, where heaps of things that seem to have no possible value or use anywhere in the world are exhibited for sale alongside the fruit and vegetables, has not the faintest resemblance to Moorish towns, even the smallest ones. It gives one the feeling that the French purposely left