ing, the houses
throughout, are every one of them kneaded and cut and baked there: crocks
to wash in, pans for charcoal, immense water-pots, small water-pots,
bowls and shallow basins, dishes of all sizes, and saucers down to the
smallest, even ink-bottles, all come into being there.

Leaving the city by _Bab-el-Nooadtha_ (the Gate of Sheaves), a little
winding path leads to the caves, which lie among thickets of prickly
pear, at the foot of the Anjera Hills, out of which they have been
hollowed, probably by the action of water. Immense ramifications they
are--great dark halls, roofed _au naturel_ in corrugated rock with
fissured sides, where maiden-hair fern hangs cool and green. Here in the
dark shadows are a little company of workmen, chiefly in brown jellabs
and leathern aprons, one cutting squares out of the soft clay with a
penknife--he has a pattern to help him keep them exact; another cuts
diamonds, another stars: piled up together, they look like little pastry
shapes in brown, beside the workmen, who are all sitting cross-legged on
the ground.

A little farther on two more men are dipping the top surfaces of the
diamonds into an earthenware bowl full of yellow "cream," which will
glaze and colour them, all in one. This sulphur-colour, and a blue, and a
white, are generally used for the tiles--no other shades, as a rule. A
boy in a corner is at work at one of the first processes, treading out a
vast circle of yellowish clay into the consistency of stiff dough. A
rather superior old Moor in a white turban, perhaps the master-workman,
is deftly cutting out rosettes. In the front of the cave a little brown
donkey, with pasterns as weak as a reed, is standing under the weight of
four great earthenware pots full of water, two balanced on each side its
pack. A boy empties them one by one of the water, pouring it into a
natural basin scooped out in the ground, well puddled with clay, and
therefore without a leak. The water is wanted to mix with the "dough."
Then the donkey patters off for another load, the boy sitting sideways on
its pack and shaking his heels--that makes it go.

To the left stands a kiln in process of being packed with millions of the
clay dice, which, baked hard, dove-tailed together, and forming a smooth,
polished surface, will keep many a room cool. The kiln next door to it,
is full of pots and pans of all shapes and sizes, but its opening is
plastered up with clay, and they are not to be seen. I