I visited three synagogues, one in a private house.  The approaches were in every case disgusting, but the synagogues themselves were well kept, very old, and decorated with rare and curious memorial lamps, kept alight for the dead through the year of mourning.  The benches were of wood, with straw mats for cover; there was no place for women, and the seats themselves seemed to be set down without attempt at arrangement.  The brasswork was old and fine, the scrolls of the Law were very ancient, but there was no sign of wealth, and little decoration.  In the courtyard of the chief synagogue I found school-work in progress.  Half a hundred intelligent youngsters were repeating the master’s words, just as Mohammedan boys were doing in the Madinah, but even among these little ones ophthalmia was playing havoc, and doubtless the disease would pass from the unsound to the sound.  Cleanliness would stamp out this trouble in a very little time, and preserve healthy children from infection.  Unfortunately, the administration of this Mellah is exceedingly bad, and there is no reason to believe that it will improve.

When the Elevated Court is at Marrakesh the demand for work helps the Jewish quarter to thrive, but since the Sultan went to Fez the heads of the Mellah seem to be reluctant to lay out even a few shillings daily to have the place kept clean.  There are no statistics to tell the price that is paid in human life for this shocking neglect of the elementary decencies, but it must be a heavy one.

Business premises seem clean enough, though the approach to them could hardly be less inviting.  You enter a big courtyard, and, if wise, remain on your horse until well clear of the street.  The courtyard is wide and cared for, an enlarged edition of a patio, with big store-rooms on either side and stabling or a granary.  Here also is a bureau, in which the master sits in receipt of custom, and deals in green tea that has come from India via England, and white sugar in big loaves, and coffee and other merchandise.  He is buyer and seller at once, now dealing with a native who wants tea, and now with an Atlas Jew who has an ouadad skin or a rug to sell; now talking Shilha, the language of the Berbers, now the Moghrebbin Arabic of the Moors, and again debased Spanish or Hebrew with his own brethren.  He has a watchful eye for all the developments that the day may bring, and while attending to buyer or seller can take note of all his servants are doing at the stores, and what is going out or coming in.  Your merchant of the better class has commercial relations with Manchester or Liverpool; he has visited England and France; perhaps some olive-skinned, black-eyed boy of his has been sent to an English school to get the wider views of life and faith, and return to the Mellah to shock his father with both, and to be shocked in turn by much in the home life that passed uncriticised before.  These things lead to domestic tragedies at times, and yet neither son nor father is quite to blame.