Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/79

68 all the rest of her visage in the folds of her haikh, after the foresaid Fatima or Leila has sold us a dozen eggs or a pound of butter, we do not feel quite so disposed to think of these ladies only as the inmates of luxurious harems, where they repose all day on the softest couches, breathing only an atmosphere pervaded with the most fragrant perfumes, holding the amber-mouthed narghil to their lips, and constantly fanned by the black slaves who are ever at their beck. A little acquiantance with Moorish and Eastern life soon dispels much of the romance with which ignorance associates it.

How strange are the associations of real life! I had only to turn in one direction from this scene of active barter, and within the distance of a stone's throw I beheld the Moorish cemetery. It is a melancholy and deserted looking place. The last homes of the departed are indicated, as in our own churchyards, by small mounds of earth, the graves of the more wealthy being encircled by a low white wall. The dead are all buried with their heads towards Mecca, the sacred city, which no Christian is allowed to enter, which is the resort of so many Mohammedan pilgrims during life, and where are the three things held most holy in the estimation of a follower of the prophet,