begin at last to wonder whether the days of the
Crusades have not returned, and whether this
motley crowd, belonging to all nations, and
jabbering all dialects, is not part of the enormous
host whilom encamped at Jaffa or Ascalon.
Surely the Duke of Bethlehem or the Marquis
of Jericho must be somewhere hereabouts.
Surely Richard of England must have patched
up a truce with the Sultan Saladin, and the
camp-followers of the Christian and the Saracen
army must be making merry together. No;
this is only an ordinary Algerian Sunday. It is
the Christian Sunday, remember; but it is
worthy of remark that the Hebrews who had
their Sabbath yesterday, and the Mahomedans
who had theirs the day before, do not evince
the slightest disinclination to take an extra
holiday on the real or Nazarene one.

The Café de l'Ancienne Kiosque was rather
a tumbledown place of entertainment, and might
have been easily mistaken for one of the inferior
guinguettes outside the barriers, whither, in
olden times, ere Paris, both outside and inside its
barriers, had grown to be the dearest city in the
world, one used to repair to drink petit bleu at
eight sous the litre. The different nationalities
were enjoying themselves, each after its
peculiar fashion, at the Ancienne Kiosque. The
burnoused Arabs were gravely squatting on the
benches outside, paying a trifle, I suppose, to the
proprietor of the cafe for that privilege; for they
brought their own tobacco, and partook of no
other refreshment. A noisy group of Frenchmen
were wrangling over a pyramid game of
billiards— the once green cloth of the table
tinted dun grey from long use and many absinthe
stains, and grown as full of rents as poor
Robin's jerkin. At the side-tables some sailors
were drinking drams. Sailors are cosmopolitans
in that respect. The Germans had a back yard
to themselves, where they were playing ninepins
and wallowing in drouthy draughts of bière de
Mars. The cockpit was at the extremity of a
long garden, originally laid out in the French or
sham classical style, but where the indigenous
and spiky cactus had long since had it all its
own way, carrying things before it literally
with a high hand, and driving out the modest
plants of Europe with sticks, and staves, and
sharp-pointed knives. Next to the horse-armoury
at the Tower, a grove of cactus is about the most
formidable array of lethal-like weapons I know.

We paid a franc apiece, and were admitted
into a square barn-like apartment, the walls
whitewashed, and the roof supported by heavy
beams. Within this quadrangle had been
constructed a theatre, properly so called, consisting
of twenty rows of seats, disposed one over the
other in circles, and gradually widening in
diameter as they ascended. You entered this
theatre by means of ladders and trap-doors, of
which there might have been half a dozen in the
different grades of seats, and I may best explain
my meaning by saying that the outside ot the
structure looked, from the floor of the barn, like
a gigantic wooden funnel. The neck of the
funnel was the cockpit itself. We climbed up
to the highest range of seats, and, getting as
close as we could to the two gendarmes who
represented authority, looked curiously around
and beneath. There was little fear of disturbance,
however. The " roughs" were not present
that Sunday morning; indeed, we heard
subsequently that it was Saint Somebody's day— a
Maltese saint— and that the brown islanders were
protracting their devotions at their own church.
The Spaniards, who had all doubtless attended
mass before eleven A.M., were the chief
occupants of the theatre; and into it were crammed,
tight as herrings in a barrel, at least two
hundred and fifty amateurs. Turn where you would,
were visible the swarthy faces, bright black eyes,
closely cropped whiskers, upper lips and chins
blue from constant shaving, ear-lobes decorated
with rings of gold, hair in clubs, in queues, in
nets, and in bags, pork-pie or soft felt hats with
rosettes, round shaggy jackets, loose neckerchiefs,
and curiously worked gaiters or
embroidered slippers, so distinctive of the children of
sunny Spain. They were all smoking. On such
solemn occasions as bull-fights and cock-fights,
the cigarettes or paper roll is accounted puerile
and jejune, and the genuine weed or puro
enjoyed. Such puros as were in a state of
combustion here were probably not of the Algerine
or three-a-penny species. They were big, black,
odorous, and probably smuggled from the Peninsula.
The company had obviously taken a good
deal of garlic with their morning meal; and, if
you will again be pleased to recollect that the
month was May, and the country Africa, I need
not enter into any details concerning the some-
what powerful aroma which issued from the two
hundred and fifty amateurs. But a better
behaved, a quieter audience I never saw. It is a
pity they had not something worthier than a cock-
fight in which to display their good behaviour.

I am so ignorant of the technology of cock-
fighting as to be unaware of the precise meaning
of a " main;" but we saw five different
battles between five brace of birds. They were,
for the most part, as game as game could be.
One only— it was the third fight— a red long-
legged fellow, " El rubio," as he was called in
the betting, showed, figuratively speaking, the
white feather. He essayed to run away from
his adversary, and even to scale the walls of the
pit; whereat there were dull murmurs among
the auditory, and cries of " Fuera!— fuera el
rubio" " Out with him!" His owner very
speedily put an end to the growing discontent
by jumping into the pit, seizing the recreant
gladiator, wringing its neck, and stamping upon
it. He. then handed over a handful of dollars,
his loss on the event, to the owner of the
opposition bird, and philosophically lighting a fresh
puro, regained his seat, and betted throughout
the next fight on a white bird with a grey gorget.

Cockpit Royal! As I gazed on the fierce
struggle, I could not but recal the mild
Wordsworth's mellifluous description of Chanticleer
under pacific circumstance:

Sweetly ferocious round his native walks,
Pride of his sister-wives, the monarch stalks;
Spur-clad his nervous feet, and firm his tread,
A crest of purple tips the warrior's head;