out five
feet wide, you sit down to watch the perpetual come-and-go of the
inhabitants. Taking a cup of fragrant coffee--which, as the reader
knows, is in Eastern countries eaten at the same time that it is
drunk--you sit on a stone bench of the coffee-house and contemplate
mules, horses, asses, passengers, buyers, sellers, loungers, Arabs,
Turks, Kabyles, Jews, Moors and spahis. On every side you hear the cry
of "Balek! balek!" This means "Look out!" and the word is closely
followed by the causative fact. The street is unpaved, the horse is
unshod, the hoofs cannot be heard, and you have hardly time to efface
yourself against a wall when a cavalier passes by like a careless
torrent, scattering the white bornouses centrifugally from his pathway
as he advances. The streets, as we observed, are very narrow. Each has
its own manufacture. Here are the tailors; here, in this deafening
alley, are the blacksmiths; farther on are the shoemakers, and you are
driven mad with wonder at the quantities of slippers made for a people
which goes eternally barefoot. Springing out of this daedal intricacy of
booths and workshops rise the slender minarets of prayer, of which the
principal one belongs to a mosque said to be the most beautiful in
Algeria. The interior of this chief mosque is not deprived of ornament,
having its columns of pink marble, its elliptical Moorish arches, and
its tiles of painted fayence set in the walls. In the centre is the
pulpit, coarsely painted red and blue, where the imaum recites his
prayers. Three small, lofty windows are filled with carved lacework. The
floor is spread with carpets for the knees of the rich, with matting for
the poor. Over all rises the square, crescent-crowned minaret--no
_belfry_, but a steeple where the chimes are rung by the human voice.
Night and day, from the heights of their slender towers, the muezzins
toll out their vibrating notes like a bell, inviting the faithful to
prayers with the often-heard signal: "Allah ill' Allah: Mohammed resoul
Allah!"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE NATIONAL TRANS-ALLEGHANY WATER-WAY.

[Illustration: VIEW OF NEW RIVER.]

The offices of running water have afforded a fertile theme for the poet
and the philosopher. In the ruder ages of the world the water-ways which
carve their course over the face of the globe were regarded only in the
light of natural barriers against hostile invasion; and thus arose the
historic principle--

Lands inters