Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/24

Rh by. Their dark skins contrasted brilliantly with their white haikhs.

What appeared great balls of dirty clothes now came tumbling about me, and had it not been for the red slippers which terminated the mass, I should never have imagined the possibility of their being human creatures. The first idea suggested to my mind was that, on being disencumbered of the garments in which they were invested, the objects within must be disclosed in the form of porpoises, barrels of flesh, or any hideous thing, difficult to recognise as really women. Such, however, they were, for out of each bundle peered an eye upon me, twinkling with all the curiosity with which the sex in every land is charged. While gazing with wonder and humiliation at these monsters―at these women, if I must call them so―I suddenly felt something wet upon my face. I had undergone one of those acts of humiliation to which these people think it proper to subject those of the Christian faith. On looking up, I met the grin of a shiny, frizzly black slave, her mouth, which was on the full stretch, disclosing a matchless set of teeth. My appearance was too much for her. "A Nazarene woman, covered with little rags," she said. Nor was she altogether wrong in her description, for my gloves, collar, hat, shoes, stockings,