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IN THE MOSQUE
- shrouded in their
flowing garments. Above our heads are delicate arabesques, their tinting hidden by thick coats of whitewash. In the town there are as many as twenty mosques, surely a liberal supply for a population of but seven thousand people. These seven thousand Touggourtines may be said to live in one great house of many chambers; for the residential part of Touggourt is a vast irregular pile of sun-dried bricks, honey-*combed with narrow streets burrowed out like rabbit holes beneath the mass of dwellings. The thoroughfares are simply tunnels pierced in the ground floor of a two-story apartment house and lighted from above. At mid-day they are as cool as cellars, at night black and still as catacombs. Strange figures haunt the passages, reclining on ledges of masonry provided for the comfort of dreamy idlers. As we make our way through this maze of light and shadow, our reception by the people is not a disagreeable one, for there are a dozen smiles, a dozen "salamas" and greetings to
