"
The brass and copper workers had most of their metal brought to them from
the Sus country, and sold their goods by weight. Woe to the dealer
discovered with false scales. The gunsmiths, who seemed to do quite a big
trade in flint-lock guns, worked with their feet as well as their hands,
their dexterity being almost Japanese. Nearly every master had an
apprentice or two, and if there are idle apprentices in the southern
capital of my Lord Abd-el-Aziz, I was not fated to see one.
No phase of the city's life lacked fascination, nor was the interest
abated when life and death moved side by side. A Moorish funeral wound
slowly along the road in the path of a morning's ride. First came a crowd
of ragged fellows on foot singing the praises of Allah, who gives one
life to his servants here and an eternity of bliss in Paradise at the end
of their day's work. The body of the deceased followed, wrapped in a
knotted shroud and partially covered with what looked like a coloured
shawl, but was, I think, the flag from a saint's shrine. Four bearers
carried the open bier, and following came men of high class on mules. The
contrast between the living and the dead was accentuated by the freshness
of the day, the life that thronged the streets, the absence of a coffin,
the weird, sonorous chaunting of the mourners.
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