6 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
fully screened balconies, with their little trap-door-like 
windows, where perchance a glimpse might he caught 
of some dark-eyed daughter of Eve, inheriting, if 
not all her parents beauty, at least her curiosity — 
the gay costume of the men, their swarthy olive- 
tinted countenances, bearing little trace of slavery in 
their expression, and still less in their manly forms 
or erect and graceful figures — the sombre apparel 
and shadowy outline of the fairer sex, closely enve- 
loped in the black hood and mantilla of the Tras as 
Montes , passing and repassing with slow and mea- 
sured step, as if at once to challenge and defy the 
stranger’s curiosity — the jargon of song and salutation 
in a foreign tongue — the groups of loaded cattle, and 
the yoked oxen rudely attached to cars of a most 
primitive construction — and then the peculiar “ Iss- — 
st ! ” subdued, yet quite intelligible, passed from balcony 
to balcony, or to the loungers in the street below — 
these, and many other sights and sounds, united to 
complete a scene so charming in its novelty, that no 
faculty was left unoccupied. 
The scorching sun, now blazing upon our heads 
with mid-day force, reflected too by the dazzling white 
of every house, placed us in a cross fire, too hot for 
long endurance, and compelled us to seek shelter 
beneath the roof of a British merchant, who hospi- 
tably vouchsafes to every Englishman a privilege 
which he appears to enjoy in every land except old 
England; that of paying extravagantly and feasting 
