year and year about, so as not to be too long away from home
at a time. They are very hard-working, and have a great reputation for
honesty; they keep their shops open from about five in the morning
till nine at night. As the Beni M'zab do not bring their wives with
them, they usually live together in a large house, and have their
own mosque, where they worship alone, resenting the visits of all
outsiders, even of other Muslims. Admission to their mosque is
therefore practically refused to Europeans, but in Moorish dress I was
made welcome as some distinguished visitor from saintly Fez, and found
it very plain, more like the kubbah of a saint-house than an ordinary
mosque.

There are also many Moors in Algeria, especially towards the west.
These, being better workmen than the Algerines, find ready employment
as labourers on the railways. Great numbers also annually visit Oran
and the neighbourhood to assist at harvest time. Those Moors who live
there usually disport themselves in trousers, strange to stay, and,
when they can afford it, carry umbrellas. They still adhere to the
turban, however, instead of adopting the head cord. At Blidah I found
that all the sellers of sfinges--yeast fritters--were Moors, and those
whom I came across were enthusiastic to find one who knew and liked
their country. The Algerines affect to despise them and their home,
which they declare is too poor to support them, thus accounting for
their coming over to work.

The specimens of native architecture to be met with in Algeria are
seldom, if ever, pure in style, and are generally extremely corrupt.
The country never knew prosperity as an independent kingdom, such as
Morocco did, and it is only in Tlemcen, on the borders of that Empire,
that real architectural wealth is found, but then this was once the
capital of an independent kingdom. The palace at Constantine is not
Moorish at all, except in plan, being adorned with a hap-hazard
collection of odds and ends from all parts. It is worse than even the
Bardo at Tunis, where there is some good plaster carving--naksh el
hadeed--done by Moorish or Andalucian workmen. In the palaces of the
Governor and the Archbishop of Algiers, which are also very composite,
though not without taste, there is more of this work, some of it very
fine, though much of it is merely modern moulded imitation.

Of more than a hundred mosques and shrines found in Algiers when it
was taken by the French, only four of th