VOYAGE TO ALGERIA. 117 
clean and white. The street was filled with loiterers, and 
the thresholds were occupied by picturesque groups. Some 
of the men were very fine. We saw many straight, manly 
fellows who must have been six feet four in height. They 
passed us witli perfect indifference, evincing no anger, sus- 
picion, or curiosity, hardly caring in fact to glance at us 
as we passed. In one instance only during my stay at Oran 
was I spoken to by an Arab. He was a tall, good-humored 
fellow, who came smiling up to me, and muttered some- 
thing about " les Anglais." The mixed population of 
Oran is picturesque in the highest degree; the Jews, rich 
and poor, varying in their costumes as their wealth varies; 
the Arabs more picturesque still, and of all shades of com- 
plexion the negroes, the Spaniards, the French, all 
grouped together, each race preserving its own individu- 
ality, formed a picture intensely interesting to me. 
On Tuesday, the 20th, I was early at the bastionet. 
The night had been very squally. The sergeant of the 
sappers had .taken charge of our key, and on Tuesday 
morning Elliot went for it. He brought back the intelli- 
gence that the tents had been blown down, and the instru- 
ments overturned. Among these was a large and valuable 
equatorial from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. It 
seemed hardly possible that this instrument, with its 
wheels and verniers and delicate adjustments, could have 
escaped uninjured from such a fall. This, however, was 
the case; and during the day all the overturned instru- 
ments were restored to their places, and found to be in 
practical working order. This and the following day were 
devoted to incessant schooling. I had come out as a 
general stargazer, and not with the intention of devoting 
myself to the observation of any particular phenomenon. 
I wished to see the whole the first contact, the advance 
of the moon, the successive swallowing up of the solar 
spots, the breaking of the last line of orescent by the lunar 
mountains into Bailey's beads, the advance of the shadow 
through the air, the appearance of the corona and prom- 
inences at the moment of totality, the radiant streamers 
of the corona, the internal structure of the flames, a glance 
through a polariscope, a sweep round the landscape with 
the naked eye, the reappearance of the solar limb through 
Bailey's beads, and, finally, the retreat of the lunar shadow 
through the air. 
