Negro women, unveiled, white-clad, adorned as to their shiny black arms with rude heavy bracelets of silver or brass, sat at street-corners with baskets of sweet cakes and little loaves for sale. Veiled Moorish women, perchance showing just one bright black eye to tantalise the beholder, glided along like substantial ghosts in the white raiment which enveloped them from their heads down to the little feet shod with red or yellow slippers embroidered with gold thread or bright-coloured silks. Women leading tiny toddlers of children, little bright-eyed boys with crowns shaven all but one queer little tufted ridge in the middle, deftly curled this morning by mamma's loving fingers; foreheads adorned with quaint frontlets, from which hung curious ornaments of gold and coral and silver, spells against the evil eye, talismans, and what not. Little boys in beautiful cloth or silken cloaks of pale blue, or delicate purple, or crimson, or rich green, or golden yellow, trotting along as proud as peacocks, holding by the hand some tiny brother who can barely toddle. Children who have just had new slippers purchased for them, and are carrying them home in triumph; children who, with funny little copper coins in their hand, are congregating round the stall of the swarthy seller of sweetstuffs, who is ejaculating loudly, "_Heloua_, _Heloua_!" busily brandishing a feathery branch of green _artim_ the while, to keep the vagrom flies off his stores of rich dainties composed of walnut and almond toffee, pastes made of almonds and honey and sugar, little brown sugar balls thickly strewn with cummin-seeds, long sticks of peppermint, and other delicacies difficult to describe. As to the grown-up Moors, never was seen such a hand-shaking as is going on amongst them. Everybody is shaking hands with everybody else, each wishing the other the Arabic substitute for "A merry Christmas," and after each handshaking each of the participants puts his hand to his lips and proceeds, to be stopped two yards farther on for a repetition of the performance. On we go through the meat-market, and note pityingly the leanness of the Moors' Christmas beef, which has just been butchered, and of which an eager good-humored crowd are buying small pieces amid much vociferation, chaff, and "compliments of the season" generally.