Yet the native inhabitants lend colour and interest to the mean streets. The Arabs of the better class wear a dark blue overcoat and hood, which shows off their proportions to great advantage. The women are very closely veiled, only exhibiting one eye. The children, especially the little girls not yet come to the age of veiling, are cheerful and pretty, their rosy cheeks bearing witness to the cold and bracing qualities of winter at this elevation. The Jewesses affect bright colours; and red is the colour of their mourning. An occasional stranger of fierce aspect and unusual dress attracts your attention, and your guide murmurs “Marocain.” Some handicrafts survive in Tlemçen. The rubbishy trinkets dear to the Arab woman and the Christian tourist are laboriously turned out by Jews in the street of the goldsmiths. It is something to know that they are not made in Austria. Here and there you will catch a glimpse of an old Moor bending over a carpet loom. A good deal of leatherwork is done, and there is a brisk business in harness and saddlery. Tlemçen is no longer the terminus of the railway which runs to the frontier, but many frontiersmen come here to trade. It is in vain to look in Tlemçen, as in other towns of Algeria, for the pure-bred Arab. Those who pass by the name are the result of a continual mixture with the indigenous races; they are Berberized Arabs or Arabized Berbers. But in many ways they compare favourably with their compatriots elsewhere. Tlemçen has preserved some of its traditions as a city of learning. Even to-day it contains a large number of educated Mussulmans and a few savants. You may see here, as often you may see in Cairo and the cities of the East, a tradesman seated in his little shop poring over an Arab text. In Algeria generally the standard of education among the natives is very low; only a small fraction of one per cent can read and write. The religion of the Tlemçen Arabs is naturally of a somewhat higher type than that of those who, knowing nothing of the law and the prophets, are content with the observance of fast days and a cult of saints mixed with all sorts of survivals of fetishism. The Arabs of Tlemçen are said to eschew fanaticism, as becomes men of learning, to regard those who are not of their faith less with hate than with pity, as having missed the true way of salvation; an attitude not uncommon in other lands. But their religion is incrusted with intense superstition. They live in constant terror of the influence of evil spirits, the Djinns, to which are attributed almost all human ills. A madman especially is said to be possessed of evil spirits, and he cannot be cured till they are cast out of him. This fear of evil spirits influences every action of their daily lives; it is the chief stimulus to devotion, for the Djinns are kept not away save by prayer and fasting.