Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 | Page 7

Another chewed up an entire leaf of a cactus with its
dangerous spikes, which sting one's hands severely and remain rankling
in the flesh. Another filled his mouth with live coals from a brazier, and
walked around blowing out sparks. Another swallowed a living
scorpion, a small snake, broken glass and nails. The spectator was in
the midst of these enthusiasts, being touched by them in their antics, yet
he could detect no foul play, except that he imagined the sword in the
first-named experiment to have been driven into an old wound or
between the skin and the flesh. It was to counteract the influence of the
fire-eating marabouts that the French government sent over Robert
Houdin, the ingenious mechanician, but though he eclipsed their
wonders by tricks of electricity and sleight, he has left but a lame
explanation of the "juggleries" of the Algerine saints.
[Illustration: THE GREAT MOSQUE, CONSTANTINA.]
The worst attribute of these khouans is, that after having excited the
ignorant Kabyles to many a losing war by their magnetism, they remain
themselves behind the curtain, safe and sarcastic.
In the Moorish quarter of Constantina, where the streets are about five
feet wide, you sit down to watch the perpetual come-and-go of the
inhabitants. Taking a cup of fragrant coffee--which, as the reader

knows, is in Eastern countries eaten at the same time that it is
drunk--you sit on a stone bench of the coffee-house and contemplate
mules, horses, asses, passengers, buyers, sellers, loungers, Arabs, Turks,
Kabyles, Jews, Moors and spahis. On every side you hear the cry of
"Balek! balek!" This means "Look out!" and the word is closely
followed by the causative fact. The street is unpaved, the horse is
unshod, the hoofs cannot be heard, and you have hardly time to efface
yourself against a wall when a cavalier passes by like a careless torrent,
scattering the white bornouses centrifugally from his pathway as he
advances. The streets, as we observed, are very narrow. Each has its
own manufacture. Here are the tailors; here, in this deafening alley, are
the blacksmiths; farther on are the shoemakers, and you are driven mad
with wonder at the quantities of slippers made for a people which goes
eternally barefoot. Springing out of this dædal intricacy of booths and
workshops rise the slender minarets of prayer, of which the principal
one belongs to a mosque said to be the most beautiful in Algeria. The
interior of this chief mosque is not deprived of ornament, having its
columns of pink marble, its elliptical Moorish arches, and its tiles of
painted fayence set in the walls. In the centre is the pulpit, coarsely
painted red and blue, where the imaum recites his prayers. Three small,
lofty windows are filled with carved lacework. The floor is spread with
carpets for the knees of the rich, with matting for the poor. Over all
rises the square, crescent-crowned minaret--no belfry, but a steeple
where the chimes are rung by the human voice. Night and day, from the
heights of their slender towers, the muezzins toll out their vibrating
notes like a bell, inviting the faithful to prayers with the often-heard
signal: "Allah ill' Allah: Mohammed resoul Allah!"
[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE NATIONAL TRANS-ALLEGHANY WATER-WAY.
[Illustration: VIEW OF NEW RIVER.]
The offices of running water have afforded a fertile theme for the poet
and the philosopher. In the ruder ages of the world the water-ways

which carve their course over the face of the globe were regarded only
in the light of natural barriers against hostile invasion; and thus arose
the historic principle--
Lands intersected by a narrow frith Abhor each other.
But civilization has demonstrated that they subserve a much higher
purpose, that the rivers of a country are its great arteries and highways
of trade, and that they fulfill functions as numerous and benign in the
political economy as in the physical geography of the regions they
furrow. In the Old World, the advancing streams of culture, science and
commerce, and even the migrations of nations, have ebbed and flowed
along the classic valleys of the Rhine, the Rhone and the Danube; and
the banks of the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Nile are rich in memories
of the world's mightiest and most splendid empires. In America the
fertile watersheds of the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri are fast
becoming what their antitypes of the great continent have been in the
past. The outspreading wave of civilization and population has already
reached westward to the foot of the Rocky Mountains from the Gulf of
Mexico to Montana and Idaho, while even the basin of the Columbia
River is rapidly filling up with an active, thriving and busy people, who
can smile at the poet's vision:
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears