After dinner a few of the bolder spirits among the men take counsel of a guide, who leads them to the Moorish coffee-house by the great Mosque. There they listen to the music of ghaitah and gimbri, pay a peseta for a cup of indifferent coffee, and buy an unmusical instrument or two for many times the proper price. Thereafter they retire to their hotel to consider how fancy can best embellish the bare facts of the evening's amusement, while the True Believers of the coffee-house (debased in the eyes of all other Believers, and, somewhat, too, in fact, by reason of their contact with the Infidel) gather up the pesetas, curse the Unbeliever and his shameless relations, and praise Allah the One who, even in these degenerate days, sends them a profit. With these facts well in mind, it seemed best for me to let the pictures suffice for Tangier, and to choose for the text one road and one city. For if the truth be told there is little more than a single path to all the goals that the undisguised European may reach. S.L. BENSUSAN. July 1904
After dinner a few of the bolder spirits among the men take counsel of a guide, who leads them to the Moorish coffee-house by the great Mosque. There they listen to the music of ghaitah and gimbri, pay a peseta for a cup of indifferent coffee, and buy an unmusical instrument or two for many times the proper price. Thereafter they retire to their hotel to consider how fancy can best embellish the bare facts of the evening's amusement, while the True Believers of the coffee-house (debased in the eyes of all other Believers, and, somewhat, too, in fact, by reason of their contact with the Infidel) gather up the pesetas, curse the Unbeliever and his shameless relations, and praise Allah the One who, even in these degenerate days, sends them a profit. With these facts well in mind, it seemed best for me to let the pictures suffice for Tangier, and to choose for the text one road and one city. For if the truth be told there is little more than a single path to all the goals that the undisguised European may reach. S.L. BENSUSAN. July 1904