Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/22

Rh pleasantly introducing me to the Moorish territory, he held out his hand and patiently waited for his "gratification."

The primitive aspect of everything around took me quite by surprise, and I recalled successively scenes from the Arabian Nights and from the Bible. Indeed, it seemed to me that I had gone back two thousand years, that I was in a country where civilization had stagnated for ages past, where commercial intercourse had left no stamp on the features of society, and where no innovations from Europe had yet crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to supersede those old manners and customs by which life in eastern countries is so strongly contrasted with that of more western lands. Indeed, we must go back to the times of Saxon heathendom before we can find a parallel in our annals to the state of things existing at the present day on the shores of Barbary. Although enjoying constant communication with foreigners, and only eight leagues from Europe, the people of Tangier retain the same prejudices, the same aversion to mental advancement, as have ever characterised them for ages past, and they still continue to act upon their old creed, "What was good for our fathers is good for us."