At The Helm Stood
The Jew; His Whole Figure Enveloped In A Gabardine, The Cowl Of
Which, Raised Above His
Head, gave him almost the appearance of a
spectre in its shroud; whilst upon the deck, mixed with Europeans
in
Various kinds of dresses, all of them picturesque with the
exception of my own, trod the turbaned Moors, the haik of the hadji
flapping loosely in the wind. The view they obtained of us,
however, could have been but momentary, as we bounded past them
literally with the speed of a racehorses so that in about an hour's
time we were not more than a mile's distance from the foreland on
which stands the fortress Alminar, and which constitutes the
boundary point of the bay of Tangier towards the east. There the
wind dropped and our progress was again slow.
For a considerable time Tangier had appeared in sight. Shortly
after standing away from Tarifa, we had descried it in the far
distance, when it showed like a white dove brooding on its nest.
The sun was setting behind the town when we dropped anchor in its
harbour, amidst half a dozen barks and felouks about the size of
our own, the only vessels which we saw. There stood Tangier before
us, and a picturesque town it was, occupying the sides and top of
two hills, one of which, bold and bluff, projects into the sea
where the coast takes a sudden and abrupt turn. Frowning and
battlemented were its walls, either perched on the top of
precipitous rocks, whose base was washed by the salt billows, or
rising from the narrow strand which separates the hill from the
ocean.
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