booths, the Phoenician merchants who had
been his companions in their long and perilous journey from the coast
were already in treaty with numerous customers, hoping, not in vain,
to recoup themselves amply for the toils and dangers which they had
survived. Beneath these booths were spread their goods; silks from Cos,
bronze weapons and copper rods, or ingots from the rich mines of Cyprus,
linens and muslins from Egypt; beads, idols, carven bowls, knives,
glass ware, pottery in all shapes, and charms made of glazed faience
or Egyptian stone; bales of the famous purple cloth of Tyre; surgical
instruments, jewellery, and objects of toilet; scents, pots of rouge,
and other unguents for the use of ladies in little alabaster and
earthenware vases; bags of refined salt, and a thousand other articles
of commerce produced or stored in the workshops of Phoenicia. These
the chapmen bartered for raw gold by weight, tusks of ivory, ostrich
feathers, and girls of approved beauty, slaves taken in war, or in some
instances maidens whom their unnatural parents or relatives did not
scruple to sell into bondage.

In another portion of the square, provisions and stock, alive and
dead, were being offered for sale, for the most part by natives of the
country. Here were piles of vegetables and fruits grown in the gardens,
sacks of various sorts of grain, bundles of green forage from the
irrigated lands without the walls, calabashes full of curdled milk,
thick native beer and trusses of reed for thatching. Here again were
oxen, mules and asses, or great bucks such as we now know as eland
or kudoo, carried in on rough litters of boughs to be disposed of by
parties of savage huntsmen who had shot them with arrows or trapped them
in pitfalls. Every Eastern tribe and nation seemed to be represented
in the motley crowd. Yonder stalked savages, naked except for their
girdles, and armed with huge spears, who gazed with bewilderment on the
wonders of this mart of the white man; there moved grave, long-bearded
Arab merchants or Phoenicians in their pointed caps, or bare-headed
white-robed Egyptians, or half-bred mercenaries clad in mail. Their
variety was without end, while from them came a very babel of different
tongues as they cried their wares, bargained and quarrelled.

Aziel gazed at this novel sight with interest, till, as he was beginning
to weary of it, the crowd parted to right and left, leaving a clear lane
across the market-place to the n