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 with perfect indifference, evincing no anger, sus- 

 picion, or curiosity, hardly caring in fact to glance at us 

 ns 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 

 genetal 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 crescent 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. 



