rise the African mountains, shaded with every rich and lovely tint of purple and green and gold, and some white-tipped with everlasting snow. To the left the blue sea of the Straits and the purple mountains of Spain, which on a clear day look so near that the little town of Tarifa, nestling in the sands at their base, seems but a stone's throw off. In the farther distance Gibraltar is plainly visible, even to the houses clustering about the base of the Rock, and the zig-zag wall running up its side. Fleets of merchant vessels passing through the Straits, with their snowy sails spread to the breeze, add to the wonderful variety and beauty of the scene; all above which spreads the limpid azure of the glorious sky.

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The foreground is in keeping with the general brilliancy and variety of the picture: the gateway, with its pointed arch, and jagged uneven walls, every nook and cranny of which forms a bed for some bright and graceful climbing or clinging plant; the steep hill, down which a precipitous path winds into the town, clothed in the verdure of springing corn; the edges of the path bordered with the gay blue borage and a brilliant yellow starry-blossomed flower. Nor is life and movement wanting. Up and down the path passes a continual stream of people; Moors, civilians, wearing mostly gelabs of dark-blue cloth, with haiks and turbans of snowy white; soldiers in jackets and burnouses of every bright hue, carrying

their gaily inlaid matchlocks; Moorish women wrapped in their large white haiks, and struggling awkwardly along with their loose scarlet slippers; Jews in dark blue gabardines and black skull caps; burly negro slaves lightly clad in white cotton garments; with now and then a stranger in stiff sombre European garb. Some are riding horses, donkeys, or mules; others driving these animals along laden with heavy burdens. About the gateway, enjoying the beauty of the scene and that simple unadulterated idleness vhich seems to form one of the principal pleasures of Eastern life, lie or squat groups of the same people-except the women.

This is the outward aspect of Tangier, in fine spring weather. There is, it must be owned, a reverse side to the picture. It sometimes rains in Tangier; and when it does, it does it with a will. Then vanish the mountains, hidden in clouds of mist, and sea and sky and land are lost in one indistinguishable mass of dull grey.

This, however, is not often the case. There is a good deal of rain sometimes in November and December, but from Christmas out the sky is generally exquisitely clear, and the sun shines brilliantly; really brilliantly; as it never condescends to shine over our foggy isles. Picturesque and beautiful as Tangier is, however, looked at thus from the outside'; within it is like that cup and platter mentioned in Holy Writ, "full

of all uncleanness and rottenness." The steep, narrow, ill-paved streets are strewed with filth and offal of every description. Rotting orange peels and refuse of vegetables, the entrails of fowls and fish, dead rats, new-born puppies and kittens-these cast forth living-are not the worst of the abominations that are thickly strewed or sometimes accumulated into heaps under foot.

The streets are exceedingly narrow, some not being more than three or four feet wide. In proof of this I may state that the cats jump across them from roof to roof, even when, as in many cases, the houses at one side are a story higher than those at the other. They are wretchedly paved. The principal street of the town, running up from the Waterport to the Soko (Market-place), though very much wider than any of the others, is in this respect and that of cleanliness, in no way superior. No attempt was apparently made to level its surface before paving, so that in addition to being a steep ascent the whole way, its configuration consists of a series of miniature hills and valleys. Then the stones with which it is paved are of all sizes and shapes, and laid without any regard to its geographical peculiarities. The large ones have been placed on the tops of the hills, the little ones in the valleys. Round ones like cannonballs are in juxtaposition to square ones fixed corner wise; while a broad, flat, smooth stone, for the pedes