ry conditions. It is not good to eat
pig in hot countries: thus pork was "unclean," and is to-day in Morocco.
Nor is the consumption of much spirituous liquor wise when the
thermometer marks a hundred and one: hence the Kor[=a]n forbids the use
of strong drinks. The same motive underlies the fast, which rests and
relieves systems over-fattened and little exercised. But the "all or
nothing" theory which governs the uneducated and knows no moderation runs
a benefit into an abuse. Ramadhan had its disadvantages. Tetuan was
revelling at night and in a sodden sleep through the day; work was
slipshod and at sixes and sevens; men were irritable and quarrelsome;
every one looked indisposed; and the excuse for it all was always
Ramadhan. Worst of all, the countrywomen still tramped four and five
hours into market with loads, and children a month old, only half
nourished at the time of the fast.

But Ramadhan came to an end at last: Morocco breathed again. The day
before the fast was over everybody was smiling, and Tetuan had but one
hope, that the new moon would be seen that night, and thus the month of
penance come to an end. After the letter from Tangier had been received
next morning, which said that the new moon had been seen there, the gun
from the fort thundered, the basha went in gorgeous state to the
_Jama-el-Kebeer_ (Big Mosque) on a white mule, all caparisoned in blue,
and read aloud the letter, the city was uproarious, and the mountains
echoed again, for soldiers were sent post-haste up the valleys, and fired
all day at intervals to notify to the fathermost villages that Ramadhan
was over.

And the next day! The first day of the _Aid-el-Sereer_ (Little Feast)!
Everybody was in shining white, if not new, apparel, and all Tetuan was
abroad. That among a people clad so largely in white and in gorgeous
colours means a great deal, and the streets of Tetuan might have competed
with the Park on the Sunday before Ascot. The Moorish crowd was almost
entirely a male one, dressed like peacocks: satins embroidered with gold
and silver prevailed.

And if the snowy haiks and turbans and the resplendent shades of the
kaftans were the first point about the feast, the sweetmeat stalls were
the second. A Moor is a born sweet-tooth, and at every corner of the
streets a board was stacked with creamy mixtures in which walnuts were
embedded, with generously browned toffee full of almonds, with
carmine-coloured sticks, with magenta squar