THE EAST END. 



83 



it is the first that I have seen in an African 

 city. As we go eastward all snch signs of civili- 

 zation vanish ; the snn and wind are the only 

 engineers, and the frequent green and black 

 puddles, like those of the filthy Ghetto, or Jews' 

 quarter, at Damascus, argue a preponderance of 

 black population. Here, as on the odious sands, 

 the festering impurities render strolling a task 

 that requires some resolution, and the streets 

 are unfit for a decent (white) woman to walk 

 through. I may say the same of almost every 

 city where the negro element abounds. 



As in the coast settlements of the Red 

 Sea and of Madagascar, the house material is 

 wholly coral rag, a substance at once easily 

 worked and durable — stone and lime in one. 

 The irregularity of the place is excessive, and it 

 is by no means easy to describe its peculiar phy- 

 siognomy. The public buildings are poor and 

 mean. The mosques which adorn Arab towns 

 with light and airy turrets, breaking the mono- 

 tony of square white tenements, magnified claret- 

 chests, are here in the simplest Wahhabi form. 

 About 30 of these useful, but by no means orna- 

 mental, ' meeting-houses ' are scattered about 

 the city for the use of the 6 established church.' 

 They are oblong rooms, with stuccoed walls, and 



