Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1891 — The City of Morocco. [ARTICLE]

The City of Morocco.

The streets are narrow, without names, and crooked, and the houses without numbers, like all those of Morocco towns. The population is estimated at 60,000. The city is divided into two parts, each with its walla and gates. One quarter is exclusively for Jews and the other for The Jews are kept strictly within their own division at night, and none of them can walk by {their gates into the Mohammedan quarter without taking off their slipipers, and some of the more fanatioal r°f the people place hot coals in their path, so as to burn their feet as they {walk along. There is no regular police to keep order, yet we have never Geen brawls in the streets, nor have we .heard that the people do much serious damage to one another. The climate of Morocco is considered particularly salubrious. The summer heat is tempered by the snowcapped Atlas, which raises its high summit just behind, while the abundant supply of exoellent water, which passes through the city, contributes much to the health of the people. As it rained nearly every day during our sojourn in this oountry, we found .Morocco at this time of the year particularly dirty, the rains having made the streets so muddy that they all seemed like running sewers. However, during our stay we visited ■the principal bazars and shops, which we found well stocked with Manchester and native products. Some of the people were gathering up the mud and storing it in their shops to mend their houses with. We passed through several markets full of people, and wq examined every kind of work which they were pleased to show us. Here there are markets for all sorts of industry. There is the slave market, which is held every Friday; also the skin, oil, grain and other markets. Here we have a street where old shoes are mended and new ones made and exposed for sale, there a street for old clothes, and others for saddlery, ironmongery, grinding mills, gunsmiths, daggers and swords. The pottery is truly Moorish in character. Fruit, charcoal, cooscosoo have markets of their own. Bread and meat have their peculiar quarteis Carriers goj about with skins supplying the thirsty with drink.— Blackwood’s Macjazinel