some L3 are charged for the whole journey from Tangier,
a thousand pilgrims being crowded on a medium-sized merchant vessel,
making the horrors of the voyage indescribable.

But the troubles of the pilgrims do not begin here. Before they could
even reach the sea some of them will have travelled on foot for a
month from remote parts of the interior, and at the coast they may
have to endure a wearisome time of waiting for a steamer. It is while
they are thus learning a lesson of patience at one of the Moorish
ports that I will invite you for a stroll round their encampment on
the market-place.

This consists of scores of low, makeshift tents, with here and there
a better-class round one dotted amongst them. The prevailing shape of
the majority is a modified edition of the dwelling of the nomad Arab,
to which class doubtless belongs a fair proportion of their occupants.
Across the top of two poles about five feet high, before and behind,
a ridge-piece is placed, and over this is stretched to the ground on
either side a long piece of palmetto or goat-hair cloth, or perhaps
one of the long woollen blankets worn by men and women alike, called
haiks, which will again be used for its original purpose on board the
vessel. The back is formed of another piece of some sort of cloth
stretched out at the bottom to form a semi-circle, and so give more
room inside. Those who have a bit of rug or a light mattress, spread
it on the floor, and pile their various other belongings around its
edge.

The straits to which many of these poor people are put to get a
covering of any kind to shelter them from sun, rain, and wind, are
often very severe, to judge from some of the specimens of tents--if
they deserve the name--constructed of all sorts of odds and ends,
almost anything, it would seem, that will cover a few square inches.
There is one such to be seen on this busy market which deserves
special attention as a remarkable example of this style of
architecture. Let us examine it. The materials of which it is composed
include hair-cloth, woollen-cloth, a cotton shirt, a woollen cloak,
and some sacking; goat skin, sheep's fleece, straw, and palmetto cord;
rush mats, a palmetto mat, split-cane baskets and wicker baskets; bits
of wood, a piece of cork, bark and sticks; petroleum tins flattened
out, sheet iron, zinc, and jam and other tins; an earthenware dish and
a stone bottle, with bits of crockery, stones, and a cow's horn to
weight some