While the steamer was being warped with aggravating deliberation into her berth, I looked down from the rail upon the picturesque scene and gave a sigh of contentment. It was good to sniff again the smell of Africa, to be back in the Orient once more. I breathed deep of the soft night air, laden with the fragrance of orange-blossoms, jasmine, and bougainvillea. After the glare of the sea, my eyes were rested by the dim outlines of the buildings, garish enough by day but of ivory and amber loveliness when bathed in the light of the moon. I reveled in the color and picturesqueness of the throng waiting on the wharf below. Ranged along the edge of the quay, very gorgeous and self-important in their gold-laced jackets and voluminous trousers, were the dragomans and runners from the various hotels and tourist-agencies; alert, energetic fellows, speaking a smattering of many tongues, who spend their lives on steamship-wharves and railway-station platforms, welcoming the arriving and speeding the parting guest. Beyond them was a little group of wealthy young Tunisians, in immaculately ironed tarbooshes and spotless burnouses of the most delicate colors, one of them with a crimson blossom worn behind his ear, come to welcome some friend returning from Paris or Monte Carlo. A pair of bearded, hawk-nosed spahis paced slowly up and down, their enormous white turbans bound with ropes of camel’s-hair, long scarlet cloaks hanging to their booted and spurred heels. And well at the back, kept in their place by the whip of a native _goumier_, was a vociferous throng of Arab and negro porters, shouting and gesticulating for the first chance to make a franc by carrying ashore our luggage, and waiting, like sprinters on the mark, for the lowering of the gang-plank to storm the ship as their ancestors, the Barbary pirates, did of old. Drawn up beside the customs shed was a powerful car of American make with a uniformed kavass from the residency and an alert-faced chauffeur in trim gray whipcord standing beside it. “For Colonel Powell?” I asked the chauffeur in French as we set foot ashore. “Yes, sir,” was the reply, in the unmistakable nasal twang of New England. “But you needn’t speak to me in French unless you want to. My name is Harvey Wilson and I’m from Providence, Rhode Island.”