boiled locusts for sale. Fortune-tellers, draugh -
players, snake-charmers, kabdb cookers, vendors ot
sour milk, and oil merchants cumber the ground in
all directions.
Under the arcades which surround the market
are a row of little den-like shops kept mostly by the
Mozabite traders. _ .
These Mozabites are a curious race, who claim
to be descended from the Moabites of Canaan.
Their home is in the five oases of the Mzab confederation
lying in the south of Algeria. They
never settle definitely in any other towns, but come
up into the Algerian cities to make their pile, and,
having made it, retire with their savings to spend
their old age in their desert homes. In almost
every town throughout Algeria a colony of these
merchants has established itself. Wherever they
have settled they are slowly driving, by their
capacity for business, not only the Arabs and other
natives of Algeria, but the very European colonists
themselves, from the field of commerce.
Into one of their shops Aissa took me. It was
a little den some twelve feet square, surrounded on
three sides by tiers of shelves crammed with
burnouses, bales of calico, and boxes containing
odds and ends. From the ceiling hung a profusion
of minor articles. Sacks of sugar, couscous, and
soap stood on the floor, while piles of Arab sandals
and slippers were heaped up in the corners. o
an inch of space was wasted.
The proprietor, a shrewd, pleasant-looking o
Mozabite, standing behind the zinc-covered counter,