de; and so great
kindness and good will went with it from the family who cooked it in the
next room and served it with such cordial insistence that I think it was
worth quite the larger sum. It would not have been polite to note how
much of this superabundance was consumed by the three Spanish gentlemen
who had so courteously saluted us in sitting down at table with us. I
only know that they made us the conventional acknowledgment in refusing
our conventional offer of some things we had brought with us from our
hotel to eat in the event of famine at Tarifa.

When we had come at last to the last course, we turned our thoughts
somewhat anxiously to the question of a guide for the town which we felt
so little able to explore without one; and it seemed to me that I had
better ask the policeman who had brought us to our _fonda._ He was
sitting at the head of the stairs where we had left him, and so far from
being baffled by my problem, he instantly solved it by offering himself
to be our guide. Perhaps it was a profession which he merely joined to
his civic function, but it was as if we were taken into custody when he
put himself in charge of us and led us to the objects of interest which
I cannot say Tarifa abounds in. That is, if you leave out of the count
the irregular, to and fro, up and down, narrow lanes, passing the blank
walls of low houses, and glimpsing leafy and flowery _patios_ through
open gates, and suddenly expanding into broader streets and unexpected
plazas, with shops and cafes and churches in them.

Tarifa is perhaps the quaintest town left in the world, either in or
out of Spain, but whether it is more Moorish than parts of Cordova or
Seville I could not say. It is at least pre-eminent in a feature of
the women's costume which you are promised at the first mention of the
place, and which is said to be a survival of the Moslem civilization.
Of course we were eager for it, and when we came into the first wide
street, there at the principal corner three women were standing, just
as advertised, with black skirts caught up from their waists over their
heads and held before their faces so that only one eye could look out
at the strangers. It was like the women's costume at Chiozza on the
Venetian lagoon, but there it is not claimed for Moorish and here it
was authenticated by being black. "Moorish ladies," our guide proudly
proclaimed them in his scanty English, but I suspect they were Spanish;
if they were re