Agurai In Marocco

Agura is a small town surrounded with walls of frora 40 to 50 feet in height and built of tabia, or coneolidated rubble. It owes its existence to Mulai Ismail, who held the throne of Marocco from 1722-1757. One gate alone gives entrance to the place, and in this respect, as well as in its architecture within and without, it mucb. resembles the "ksor" of the Sahara deecribed in the writer's "Tafilet. " But it owns one feature of curiosity which was lacking in the desert, för almost without exception the entire population are descendants of the renegades and Christian slaves of the time of Mulai Ismail, with the addition of stray renegades who have been sent there since. Probably no such cosmopolitan place exists in the world. for its 300 or 400 inhabitants are representativo of no less than 18 nationalities. Each farnily remembers aud is proud of its origin, the Arab equivalent beiug applied as surnames. The family in whose home the writer spent the few days of his visit were Flemish, while the nest door neighbor ou one side was an elderly female, whose father, au Englishrnan, had become a renegade some 80 years since, and who quickly tired of it, leaving a wife and daughter, the neighbor in question. The other neighbors were the descendants of Spanish gypsies, the head of the family beiug "Absalam ben Mohammed el Gitano el Espanoli. " They were particularly proud of the "Gitano" (gypsy) part of the surname and begged me not to confound them with the ordiuary Spaniards, of whoru there were many descendants in Agurai. The ancestor of this gypsy family was two generations back. He had left his country, they naively told the writer, beoanse he was not on good terras with his sultan, who wanted to irnprison hiru, being af raid of hisinfluence. Probably it was more of an affair of the police courts than political intrigue. The "ülad el Aluj" ("sons of the converts"), as the iuhabitantsof Agurai are called, have entirely, except in one or two cases, lost the type of their European ancestry, and tbrough marriage, no doubt, are as largely Berber in appearauce as the wild tribes that surrouud them. They speak among thernselves both Arabic and Berber, and both, curiously enough, with a strong foreign accent, easiiy distinguishable. They are exernpt from all taxation, but have to serve in the sultan 's army, where they perforru the duties of cooks and butchers.