From the Frenchman at the hotel, whose knowledge of Morocco was "extensive and peculiar," I acquired much of my information on the manners and customs of the people. Watches are only worn and looked at for amusement. Instead of by hours, time is thus noted: El Adhen, an hour before sunrise; Fetour (repast) el Hassoua, or sunrise; Dah el Aly, ten in the morning; El Only, a quarter past twelve; El Dhoor, half-past one; El Asser, from a quarter past three to a quarter to four; El Moghreb, sunset; El Achâ, half-an-hour after sunset; and El Hameir, gun-shot. Meals are taken at Dah el Aly, El Asser, and El Moghreb. The houses are built with elevated lateral chambers, but there is a narrow staircase leading to the Doeria, a reception-room, where visitors can be welcomed without passing the ground-floor. The walls are plastered, and covered with arabesques or verses of the Koran incrusted in colours. The wells inside the houses are only used for cleansing linen; water for drinking purposes is sought outside.
Among many singular customs--singular to us--I noted that a popular remedy for illness is to play music and to recite prayers to scare away the devil. An enlightened Moor might think the practices of the Peculiar People quite as strange, and question the infallibility of cure-all pills at thirteen-pence-halfpenny the box. The dead in Morocco are hurried to their graves at a hand-gallop. That, I submit, is no more unreasonable than many English funeral usages, such as incurring debt for the pomp of mourning. At Moorish weddings the bride is carried in procession in a palanquin to her husband's house amid a _fantasia_ of gunpowder--the reckless rejoicing discharges of ancient muskets in the streets. Well, white favours, gala coaches, and _feux de joie_ at marriages of the great are not entirely unknown among us. Nobody sees the Moorish wife for a year, not even her mother-in-law, which I consider a not wholly unkind dispensation. The Moorish wife paints her toe-nails, which, after all, is a harmless vanity, and less obtrusive than that of the ladies who impart artificial redness to their lips. And, lastly, the Moorish wife waits on her husband. Personally, I fail to discover anything blamable in that act, though I must concede that it is eccentric, very eccentric. These allusions to the Moorish wife in general lead up naturally to one in particular in whom I took a professional interest, for she was as remarkable in her way as Lady Ellenborough or Lady Hester Stanhope, or that strong-minded Irishwoman who married the Moslem, Prince Izid Aly, and whose son reigned after his father's death.