Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/72

Rh the intervention of a foreign stimulus; and it is not until the consuls of the European powers have urged and re-urged the matter upon them that they can be induced to set about taking the necessary steps for the cleansing of their town.

As I was passing along the street, I observed a tiny door standing open, and as I approached, a din of childish voices issuing from it told me what was going on within. It was a school for Moorish children, a perfect Babel, to all appearance, fr a more stunning noise never saluted my ears from any dame's school in an English village, where, to speak the truth, they are often noisy enough. As I was anxious to see all that I could in this country, and among other things to learn something of their method of instructing the young, I looked into the place. A group of young children, exceedingly dirty in appearance, was collected round their pedagogue, who was instructing them in the precepts of their sacred book, the Koran. They were seated on the floor; and such an amusing sight they presented, all bobbing their little shaved heads up and down, and touching their knees with their faces regularly at certain intervals, as uniformly as if wound up and kept going by clockwork, that I could scarcely help betraying my presence and my feelings by a hearty laugh. I