SCENES IN ALGIERS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3091, 7 May 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

SCENES IN ALGIERS.

Tan wharf in Algiers, or quay, presents a curious scene during working hours. English and American tailors—there is a brig in from Liverpool, and I have already mentioned the yacht Sultana — French sailors, Butch sailors, Italian sailors, Maltese, Moors, Arabs, Biskris, Mozohites, ConloLi"lies;, Bedouins negroes, Tunisians, Jews and Kabyles, are all talking, shouting, swearing along the dock, and it is indeed a quaint and cosmopolitan scene. 1 have been in Algiers only a short while, but I have seen each day enough of mingled types to take up an artist's lifetime. There arc horsemen 011 steeds bridled and saddled with leather that is ornamented with silken stuff and gold embroidery ; soldiers, spahis, and frisky zouaves ; girls from the Paris Latin quarter, horn Tunis, from Madrid, and from interior Africa; strangers from almost every land under the sun, and among them is the famous Laugtry. There arc families clad in long, straight gowns of pink and red, of dazzling green, or of yellow colours, which lend to their lounging gait the stillness of an Egyptian statue. They wear a l)!ack silk kerchief on the top of the head, and at the back of it is a small white "tidy," partly covering hair and neck ; across the chin they wear a heavy fold of white cloth ; their eyes are sunken, their faces long, their teeth bad, and their noses hooked— and these are Jewesses. And gliding here and there and everywhere among these groups of human beings are white phantoms, with faces quite concealed, all but their mocking eves, and these veiled creatures are the wives and daughters of Moors and Arabs.—Corr. Chicago Herald.