which, if they resemble anything, present the appearance of the fore fins of a seal, and consist of multitudinous fibres.  The fruit, which somewhat resembles a pear, has a rough tegument covered with minute prickles, which instantly enter the hand which touches them, however slightly, and are very difficult to extract.  I never remember to have seen vegetation in ranker luxuriance than that which these fig-trees exhibited, nor upon the whole a more singular spot.  “Follow me,” said the Mahasni, “and I will show you something which you will like to see.”  So he turned to the left, leading the way by a narrow path up the steep bank, till we reached the summit of a hillock, separated by a deep ditch from the wall of Tangier.  The ground was thickly covered with the trees already described, which spread their strange arms along the surface, and whose thick leaves crushed beneath our feet as we walked along.  Amongst them I observed a large number of stone slabs lying horizontally; they were rudely scrawled over with odd characters, which I stooped down to inspect.  “Are you Talib enough to read those signs?” exclaimed the old Moor.  “They are letters of the accursed Jews; this is their mearrah, as they call it, and here they inter their dead.  Fools, they trust in Muza, when they might believe in Mohammed, and therefore their dead shall burn everlastingly in Jehinnim.  See, my sultan, how fat is the soil of this mearrah of the Jews; see what kermous grow here.  When I was a boy I often came to the mearrah of the Jews to eat kermous in the season of their ripeness.  The Moslem boys of Tangier love the kermous of the mearrah of the Jews; but the Jews will not gather them.  They say that the waters of the springs which nourish the roots of these trees, pass among the bodies of their dead, and for that reason it is an abomination to taste of these fruits.  Be this true, or be it not, one thing is certain, in whatever manner nourished, good are the kermous which grow in the mearrah of the Jews.”

We returned to the lane by the same path by which we had come:  as we were descending it he said, “Know, my sultan, that the name of the place where we now are, and which you say you like much, is Dar Sinah (the house of the trades).  You will ask me why it bears that name, as you see neither house nor man, neither Moslem, Nazarene, nor Jew, only our two selves; I will tell you, my sultan, for who can tell you better than myself?  Learn, I pray you, that Tangier was not always what it is now, nor did it occupy always the place which it does now.  It stood yonder (pointing to the east) on those hills above the shore, and ruins of houses are still to be seen there, and the spot is called Old Tangier.  So in the old time, as I have heard say, this Dar Sinah was a street, whether without or within the wall matters not, and there resided men of all trades; smiths of gold and silver, and iron, and tin, and artificers of all kinds:  you had