black gown, as you may see any day in the
Salle des Pas Perdus of the Paris Palais de
Justice for a twenty-eight shilling return-
ticket. There is a Monsieur le President,
glib clerks, to read the code Napoleon;
gendarmes to keep order, and outside the court a
guillotine, spick and span new from Paris, to
which the bearded prisoner is, in due course
of time, led for execution in a costume the
very counterpart of that which Jacob wore
when he went a-courting Laban's daughters.
In the Akbar you may read advertisements
of mosques to be sold, and milliners just
arrived from Paris with the latest fashions;
of balls at the ancient palace of the Dey, of a
coffee-house to be let on lease close to the
shambles in the Jews quarter; of an adjudication
in the bankruptcy of Sheikh El Haschun
El Gouti Mogrebbin, and the last importation
of Doctor Tintamarre's Infallible Pectoral
Paste. In one column there is an announcement
of the approaching sale by auction of
the entire household furniture, wearing apparel
and jewellery of Sultana Karadja,
deceased—I suppose about an equivalent to the
honourable Mrs. Smithers, here. Sofas,
divans, clocks, jewelled pipes, dresses of cloth
of gold, turbans and gauze bonnets are to
be sold. The whole reads like an execrable
French translation of a tale in the Arabian
Nights. Altogether, reading the Akbar, I
fancy that I know Algiers. I seem to see the
deep blue skies, the low white houses with
projecting balconies and porticoes painted a vivid
green, and roofs fantastically tiled. The purple
shadows that the houses cast. The narrow
dark lanes where the eaves meet, and
where you walk between dead-walls, through
chinks of which, for aught you know, bright
eyes may be looking. The newer streets with
tall French houses and pert French names;
where cafés brilliant with plate-glass, gilding
and arabesque paintings, quite outstare the
humble little shieling of the Moorish cafejee
with his store of pipes and tiny fillagree cups
of bitter coffee full of dregs. The sandy up-hill
ground. The crowded port, where black
warsteamers are moored by strange barques with
sails of fantastic shapes and colours. The
bouncing shop of the French epicier, who
sells groceries, wines, and quack medicines,
and whose smart young shopman, with an
apron and a spade-cut beard, stands at the
door; and the dusky unwindowed stall of the
native merchant who sits cross-legged, smoking
on a bale of goods in an odour of drugs,
perfumed leather, and fragrant tobacco. The
motley throng of officers with cigars, and
clanging spurs and kepis knowingly set on
one side of the head; of zouaves, dandies
from the Boulevard des Italiens; grisettes in
lace caps; commandants' wives in pink
bonnets; orderly dragoons, Bedouins mounted on
fleet Arabs, date and sherbet sellers, Jews,
fezzes, cabs, turbans, yashmaks, burnouses,
lancers' caps, and felt-hats, and the many
mingled smells of pitch, tar, garlic, pot-au-feu,
attar of roses, caporal tobacco, haschish, salt
water, melons and musk.

Is this Algiers I wonder. I fancy,
erroneously, perhaps, that I can divine a city
from a newspaper—a flask—a shoe—the most
inconsiderable object. I have a clear and
counterfeit presentment in my mind of
Leipsic, from a book—which I am unable to
read—a dimly printed, coarse-papered pamphlet
stitched in rough blue paper. I can see
in it high houses, grave, fat-faced children,
a predominance of blue in the colour for stockings,
—dinners at one o'clock—much beer
—much tobacco—a great deal of fresh boiled-
beef, soup and cabbage,—early beds—straw-
coloured beards—green spectacles—large
umbrellas, and a great many town clocks. I
should like to know whether Leipsic really
possesses any of these characteristics. A
worthy, weather-beaten old sea-captain once
gave me a perfectly definite notion of Sierra
Leone, in one little anecdote. "Sierra Leone,
sir," he said: "I'll tell you what Sierra
Leone is like. A black fellow, sir, goes into
the market. It's as hot as—— well,—
anything. He buys a melon for three farthings
—and what does he do with it? The black
fellow, sir, has'nt a rag on. He's as bare as
a robin. He buys his melon, cuts it in
halves, and scoops out the middle. He sits
in one half, covers his head with the other,
and eats the middle. That's what he does,
sir."—I saw Sierra Leone in all its tropical
glory, cheapness of produce, darkness of
population, gigantic vegetation, and primitive state
of manners immediately.

All this, although you may not think so,
bears upon, concerns, is yadacé. But to give
you yadacé at once, we will quit Sierra
Leone, and come back to Algiers.

Few would imagine, while watching in a
Moorish coffee-house the indigènes, as the
native inhabitants are called, playing with a
grave and apparently immovable tranquillity,
at draughts, chess, or backgammon—not
speaking, scarcely moving—that men,
seemingly so impassible to the chances of loss or
gain, were capable of feeling the most violent
effects of the passion for gaming. Yet these
passions and these effects they feel in all
their intensity. They lack, it is true, the
varied emotions that winners or losers express
at the green baize table of the trente-et-
quarante, the particoloured wheel of roulette,
the good-intention paved court of the Stock
Exchange, or the velvety sward of the area
before the Grand Stand at Epsom. But no
bull or bear, no caster or punter, no holder of
a betting-book who has just lost thousands
and his last halfpenny, could ever show a
visage so horribly aghast, so despairingly
downfallen, so ferociously miserable, as that
unlucky Algerine player, to whom his adversary
has just pronounced the fatal and
triumphant word—Yadacé.

The game is of the utmost simplicity, and
consists solely in abstaining from receiving