Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/306

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248
NORTH-WEST AFRICA.

south of which run the regular streets of the European quarter. The Jews are grouped in the east, the Mzabites in the centre, and in the south the Arabs occupy a labyrinth of courts and alleys, into which few Europeans venture without a guide. Whole streets are devoted to the leather trade, which is the staple industry of Constantine, giving constant employment to hundreds of tanners, saddlers, and shoemakers.

Fig. 91. — Constantine in 1884.

Constantine has scarcely any noteworthy monuments. Few of its ninety-five mosques have escaped the spoiler's hand, and the citadel is a mere aggregate of barracks and magazines, although some valuable inscriptions have been preserved in its outer walls, Nearly ten thousand inscribed stones have here been collected, and the city, which is a provincial capital, also contains numerous other archæological remains, such of Roman statues, busts, vases, sepulchral and votive