CHAPTER I. 
My* arrival at Tangier— examination-— presented to the governor — settled in a 
house. — I prepare to go to the mosque. — Festival on the birth of the pro- 
phet. — Marabout. — Visit to the Cadi. 
Having returned to Spain in April 1803, 1 em- 
barked at Tariffa, on board a very small vessel, and af- 
ter crossing the Streights of Gibraltar in four hours, I 
arrived in the port of Tanja or Tangier at 10 o'clock in 
the morning, on the 23d June in the same year. 
The sensation which we experience on making this 
short passage for the first time, can be compared only 
to the effect of a dream. Passing in so short an interval 
of time, to a world absolutely new, and which has not 
the smallest resemblance to that which we have quitted, 
we seem to have been actually transported into another 
planet. 
In all countries of the world, the inhabitants of the 
neighbouring states are more or less united by mutual 
relation; they amalgamate in some degree together, and 
intermix so much in language, habits, and customs, that 
we pass from one to the other by gradations almost im- 
perceptible. But this constant law of nature does not 
prevail between the inhabitants of the two shores of the 
Streights of Gibraltar; they, notwithstanding their vicini- 
ty, are as much strangers to each other as a Frenchman 
to a Chinese. 
In the countries of the East, if we observe successively 
the inhabitants of Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Walachia, and 
Germany, a long series of transitions marks, in some 
