View PDF version of this page

candlesticks, some buckles ; and one was finishing the crook of a bishop's crosier. At the end of this street was the meeting-place of several others. They were all covered in one way or another, some with tattered awnings of canvas or coarse matting, which made stripes above one of blackness and blinding sky, some with stone vaulting, and some with a trellis-work of vines. One was the street of drapers, and this we entered first. It seemed, as one looked down it, to flutter from end to end with gay-coloured triumphal flags, which were really stuffs for sale—veils, gorgeous handkerchiefs, and beautiful native silks. The shops themselves were for the most part vaulted, and looked like a series of chapels with one wall wanting. The dark interiors of some were piled high with goods ; others revealed in operation the processes of primitive manufacture. Here would be three men stitching the shaggy capotes of the shepherds ; here another, shaping red fez caps over gleaming copper moulds ; and here on a low platform, jutting a little into the roadway, a Nubian boy lying almost flat on his stomach, and quilting a coverlet of brilliant white and purple. And at the entrance of every shop was—I was going to say the shopkeeper, but the name sounds far too modern—it is better to say the merchant. Here was an almond-eyed Greek twitching with grimaces and vivacity ; there an old Turk squatting superbly calm, like a wax figure moving to show clockwork, alternately sucking at the amber mouthpiece of his 108 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

View PDF version of this page