On the northern fringe of the bazaars, hard by the Bab Souika, rises the Djamaa Sidi Mahrez, a renowned saint of the fifth century of the Mohammedan calendar, whose tomb makes it a sanctuary for debtors. The mosque, which is the largest in the city, was built in the seventeenth century, having been designed by a French architect taken prisoner by the corsairs. This explains, no doubt, why it is so radically different in plan and general design from the other mosques of Tunis, the great central dome, surrounded by several smaller cupolas, suggesting, if not actually resembling, Santa Sophia in Constantinople. At twilight, when its domes, their outlines softened by an amethyst and violet sky, are transformed by the westering sun into great globes of rosy coral, the beauty of effect is positively startling. There are certain scenes—the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, the Taj Mahal by moonlight, sunset on the Upper Congo—which, by reason of their surpassing loveliness, are indelibly engraved upon the tablets of my memory, and the Mosque of Sidi Mahrez at nightfall is one of them. * * * * * Among the innumerable types forming the river of humanity which flows continually through the streets of Tunis, the women, whether Moslem or Jewish, are among the strangest and certainly are the most curiosity-provoking. Unlike the custom prevailing in other Islamic lands, where the women are usually veiled only to the eyes, the faces of the Moslem women of Tunisia are entirely covered with tightly drawn veils, usually black, but quite frequently blue, bright pink, or saffron yellow, so that they appear to be wearing the cheap cotton masks with which their sisters across the Mediterranean conceal their faces during the gaieties of carnival-time. They flit like apparitions between the high, blind walls or peer down from the latticed windows of the harems in which they are immured, as much prisoners as the Man in the Iron Mask. One wonders how much longer the women of North Africa will endure this intolerable tyranny; how many years must pass before, following the example of their Turkish sisters, they will refuse any longer to hide their pretty faces, to stay within their prisons, on days when the sun is shining and the sky is blue. Even more fantastic of costume are the Jewish women, of whom one sees great numbers, for nearly one third of the city’s population is of the Hebrew faith. Though some of the young Jewish girls are quite slim and very pretty, with satiny skins, carmine lips, and lustrous, heavily-fringed eyes, most of the older women are of an enormous stoutness, their excess avoirdupois accentuated rather than camouflaged by their voluminous mantles and baggy pantaloons. Veritable mountains of flesh, they go waddling along on absurdly small and high-heeled slippers, only half as long as their feet, which go _flap-flap-flap_ upon the pavement as they roll by like full-rigged sailing-ships wallowing in a heavy sea.