no solution. Finally, a patriarch arose and
said:
"Oh, children of the Prophet, it is known unto you that a Portuguee dog
of a Christian clock mender pollutes the city of Tangier with his
presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques are builded, asses bear the
stones and the cement, and cross the sacred threshold. Now, therefore,
send the Christian dog on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to
mend the clock, and let him go as an ass!"
And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the inside
of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go in his
natural character. We visited the jail and found Moorish prisoners
making mats and baskets. (This thing of utilizing crime savors of
civilization.) Murder is punished with death. A short time ago three
murderers were taken beyond the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are
not good, and neither are Moorish marksmen. In this instance they set up
the poor criminals at long range, like so many targets, and practiced on
them--kept them hopping about and dodging bullets for half an hour before
they managed to drive the center.
When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and left leg and
nail them up in the marketplace as a warning to everybody. Their surgery
is not artistic. They slice around the bone a little, then break off the
limb. Sometimes the patient gets well; but, as a general thing, he
don't. However, the Moorish heart is stout. The Moors were always
brave. These criminals undergo the fearful operation without a wince,
without a tremor of any kind, without a groan! No amount of suffering
can bring down the pride of a Moor or make him shame his dignity with a
cry.
Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties to it. There
are no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding out, no courting in
dim parlors, no lovers' quarrels and reconciliations--no nothing that is
proper to approaching matrimony. The young man takes the girl his father
selects for him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled, and he sees
her for the first time. If after due acquaintance she suits him, he
retains her; but if he suspects her purity, he bundles her back to her
father; if he finds her diseased, the same; or if, after just and
reasonable time is allowed her, she neglects to bear children, back she
goes to the home of her childhood.
Muhammadans here who can afford it keep a good many wives on hand. They
are c
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