Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/19

8 to his race, and with a due sense of the dignity that pertained to his office, for he had been to England on a special mission, entrusted with a present of Barb horses, rich stuffs, &c., from His Shereefian Highness the Sultan of Morocco, Protector of the Faithful, to the Sultana of England.He was a very animated sitter, and as the sketch progressed, he related many wonderful narratives of his race and country. My own curiosity was so strongly excited by all he told us, that before the sketch was finished, I had determined to extend my trip, and to make Cadiz and Gibraltar stepping-stones only to the romantic shores of Western Barbary.

Having at length arrived at Gibraltar, a locality now so well known that any description would be superfluous, we started for the opposite coast by the little courrier boat which plies between the two shores, with despatches for Her Majesty's Government in England, and with supplies for Her Majesty's troops at Gibraltar. The time from leaving Gibraltar, with its Highland regiments and bristling cannon, its British ships and English sailors, with its chandler's stores kept by Brown and Johnson, and its magazins of French millinery, and, in addition to these, its English prejudices, gossip, scandal, bustle, and life―the time, we say, from leaving all these and arriving at Tangier, the