The bazaar quarter of Tunis is, as it were, a whole city under one roof—a city teeming with Oriental life; carrying on its trade in the traditional Eastern fashion; transacting its business without tables or chairs in doorless, windowless stalls, raised three or four feet above the ground and most of them only a few yards square, which their owners close at night by means of stoutly built, gaily painted shutters. In these recesses the merchants sit cross-legged, like so many Buddhas, with their merchandise spread about them, dozing, smoking, sipping black coffee, and gossiping with their neighbors. The _souks_ of Tunis cover an enormous area. They consist of a labyrinth of narrow, tortuous, wholly irregular streets, lanes, alleys, and passages; some of them vaulted, lighted only by shafts of sunlight falling through square apertures overhead; others roofed with sloping planks, uneven and rotting with age but highly picturesque, their gaping crevices permitting the street below to be flooded with sunshine or with rain. But most fascinating of all, at least in clement weather, are those bazaar lanes which are shielded from the elements only by vine-covered trellises, like pergolas, the sunlight, sifted and softened by the leaves, casting shadows of lace-like delicacy upon the worn, uneven pavement. Each of the trades has its own _souk_, and each _souk_ has its own distinctive character. Thus one street is devoted to perfumes, another to shoes, a third to jewelry, a fourth to saddlery, and so on; an arrangement which tends to make shopping easy, as the visitor in quest of a particular article is enabled to compare prices and quality and, not infrequently, to play off one merchant against another. Some of the _souks_ contain only goods for sale, but most of them are workshops as well, the goods being made by native artisans on the premises. Here, if you require an article of special design, the merchant does not tell you that he will “order it from the factory,” but instead he cuts it, or carves it, or paints it on the spot and under your supervision. They are as enchanting as they are bewildering, these Tunisian _souks_—a source of unending novelty, a panorama of pure color, the dusky light which prevails beneath the vaulted roofs serving to harmonize the tints, to soften the harsher outlines, to fill the dark recesses with mystery.