ar and
interrupts our musings? It is the call to prayer. For the fifth time
to-day that cry is sounding--a warning to the faithful that the hour
for evening devotions has come. See! yonder Moor has heard it too, and
is already spreading his felt on the ground for the performance of his
nightly orisons. Standing Mekka-wards, and bowing to the ground, he
goes through the set forms used throughout the Mohammedan world. The
majority satisfy their consciences by working off the whole five sets
at once. But that cry! I hear it still; as one voice fails another
carries on the strain in ever varying cadence, each repeating it to
the four quarters of the heavens.

It was yet early in the morning when the first call of the day burst
on the stilly air; the sun had not then risen o'er the hill tops, nor
had his first, soft rays dispelled the shadows of the night. Only the
rustling of the wind was heard as it died among the tree tops--that
wind which was a gale last night. The hurried tread of the night guard
going on his last--perhaps his only--round before returning home, had
awakened me from dreaming slumbers, and I was about to doze away into
that sweetest of sleeps, the morning nap, when the distant cry broke
forth. Pitched in a high, clear key, the Muslim confession of faith
was heard; "La ilaha il' Al-lah; wa Mohammed er-rasool Al-l-a-h!"
Could ever bell send thrill like that? I wot not.

[Illustration: _Cavilla, Photo., Tangier._

ROOFS OF TANGIER FROM THE BRITISH CONSULATE, SHOWING FLAGSTAFFS OF
FOREIGN LEGATIONS.]

VII

THE WOMEN-FOLK

"Teach not thy daughter letters; let her not live on the roof."

_Moorish Proverb._

Of no country in the world can it more truly be said than of the
Moorish Empire that the social condition of the people may be measured
by that of its women. Holding its women in absolute subjection, the
Moorish nation is itself held in subjection, morally, politically,
socially. The proverb heading this chapter, implying that women should
not enjoy the least education or liberty, expresses the universal
treatment of the weaker sex among Mohammedans. It is the subservient
position of women which strikes the visitor from Europe more than all
the oriental strangeness of the local customs or the local art and
colour. Advocates of the restriction of the rights of women in our own
land, and of the retention of disabilities unknown to men, who fail to
recognize the justice and invariability