It was a market day, and foreign commodities of all sorts were exposed for sale on the square, which were of colors gorgeous enough to enchant Ziem himself. Garlands of fiery-red peppers swung above deep-green melons, some of which had been cut in halves to show the rose-colored pulp within, dotted with black spots like a shell from the South Seas. Heavy clusters of clear, yellow grapes, like amber beads, reminding one by their fair transparency of Turkish rosaries, hung by the side of bunches of a bluish color, and others which were of an amethystine hue shading into deeper purple. Chickpeas in weedy mats rounded their globes of paly gold; pomegranates, bursting their rinds, showed caskets of rubies within. The fruit-sellers, with their scarlet and yellow capes, their black silk petticoats, bare feet thrust into satin slippers,—and what feet, hardly bigger than a Savoy biscuit!—their paper fans held against the cheek to take the place of a parasol, sat proudly beside their vegetables chattering with that Andalusian volubility which is so full of grace. Here and there some passing gallant, balancing himself on the point of his white cane, his jacket swinging from his shoulders, a broad sash from Gibraltar encircling his waist from armpit to hips, his elastic breeches open at the knee, and leathern boots from Ronda unbuttoned all the way up the leg, in what seems to be the height of the style, lingered a moment to cast a seductive glance while rolling between thumb and forefinger his cigarette of alcoy paper. It was one of those blinding effects of southern light and color which would be called an exaggeration of nature if any artist should attempt to reproduce in full its crude and dazzling truth. We sought a refuge from the fiery sun shower in the patio of The Three Moorish Kings. A _patio_, as all the world knows, is an inside court surrounded by arcades, whose arrangement reminds one of the ancient _impluvium_. In place of a roof it is shaded by a linen awning striped with gay colors, called in Spanish a _velarium_, which is kept constantly wet, in order to secure greater coolness. In the middle of this patio a slender thread of water rose and fell from a marble basin, throwing a fine spray over boxes of myrtles, pomegranates and oleanders, which were grouped about it. Sofas covered with horse-hair, and cane-seated chairs, were scattered about under the arcades. Guitars, suspended on the walls, cast brilliant reflections out of the shadow, as the light glinted on their varnished surfaces, and beside them hung the brown disks of tambourines. These patios are common in the Moorish houses of Algeria, and no better contrivance to secure coolness can be imagined. They are a device of the Arabs adopted by the Spaniards. Upon the capitals of the smaller columns, in many dwellings, can still be read verses from the Koran glorifying Allah, or laudations of some caliph long ago driven back into the heart of Africa and forgotten.