The American went through the turmoil with composure and an air of command, and having seen to my belongings as well as his own, passing them through the open office at the water-gate, where two solemn Moors in white sat by the light of candles, in the receipt of customs, he parted from me at the foot of the street that begins with the Grand Mosque, and is the main artery of the town, for he had written for rooms to the hotel called the Villa de France, and I, before leaving England, had done the same to the hotel called the Continental. Thither I was led by a barefooted courier in white jellab and red tarboosh, amid sights and sounds of fascinating strangeness: the low drone of men's voices singing their evening prayers in the mosques, the tinkling of the bells of men selling water out of goats' skins, the "Allah" of blind beggars crouching at the gates, the "Arrah" of the mule drivers, and the hooded shapes going by in the gloom or squatting in the red glare of the cafés without windows or doors and open to the streets. I met the American in the Sôk--the market-place--the following day, and he took me up to his hotel to see some native costumes which he had bought by way of preparations for his enterprise. They were haiks and soolhams, jellabs, kaftans, slippers, rosaries, korans, sashes, satchels, turbans, and tarbooshes--blue, white, yellow, and red--all right and none too new, for he had purchased them not at the bazaars, but from the son of a learned Moor, a Tàleb, who had been cast into a prison by a usurer Jew. "In these," said he, "I mean to go everywhere, and I'll defy the devil himself to detect me." "Take care," I said, "take care." He laughed and asked me what my own plans were. I told him that I would remain in Tangier until I received letters from home, and then push on toward Fez. "I'll see you there," he said; "but if I do not hail you, please do not know me. Good-by." "Good-by," I said, and so we parted.