All around us, upon the sloping hill-side, were delightful villas, painted in bright colors, and half buried in thrifty foliage, each located in an atmosphere redolent of fruits and flowers; its front ever open to that glorious sea-view. The broad piazzas of these smiling homes were hung with hammocks, telling of luxurious out-door life. Family groups could be seen taking their morning coffee on the verandas; and the voices of many children rang out clear and bird-like, floating up to the eyrie where we were perched. Down towards the shore lay brown, dingy, dirty Tangier, with its mud-colored groups of tiled roofs, its teeming population, its mouldy old walls and arched gates, and its minarets, square and dominant. On our way back, we again passed through the slave market, and saw a freshly arrived caravan pitching their tents after a long and weary journey. A snake-charmer was busy amusing an idle group of boys and girls in one of the small squares, and a group of dancing girls, with tambourines and castanets, looked wistfully at us, hoping to get an audience; but our yet unhonored breakfast awaited us, and the mountain excursion had imparted healthful appetites.
It was quite the thing to patronize one of the little dingy cafés, and so we patiently endured the punishment of drinking an egg-shell cup of a muddy compound called coffee, but nothing short of compulsion would have induced a repetition of the same. A dose of senna would have been ambrosia compared to it. In passing through a narrow court we saw a group of children sitting cross-legged, in a circle, on the floor of an open house, with books in their hands, presided over by a sage-looking Moorish party, with long, snow-white beard, and deep-set dark eyes that seemed to burn like gas jets. The guide explained that it was a native school; and the children, who were all talking aloud at the same time, in a drawling, sing-song tone, swaying back and forth incessantly, were learning their lessons. When we inquired what special branch was being taught them, he answered: "The Koran; they learn it from the beginning to the end." "And is that all the instruction imparted to them?" we asked. "Of course," he replied; "what else do they require in Morocco?"