Over this channel a bridge led into the town, and offered the convenient
support of its parapet to the crowd of spectators who wished to inhale
that powerful odor at their ease, and who hung there throughout the
working-day; the working-day of the dredging-machine, that is. The
population was so much absorbed in this that when we first crossed into
the town, we found no beggar children even, though there were a few
blind beggarmen, but so few that a boy who had one of them in charge was
obliged to leave off smelling the river and run and hunt him up for us.
Other boys were busy in street-sweeping and b-r-r-r-r-ing to the donkeys
that carried off the sweepings in panniers; and in the fine large plaza
before the principal church of Algeciras there was a boy who had plainly
nothing but mischief to do, though he did not molest us farther than to
ask in English, "Want to see the cathedral?" Then he went his way
swiftly and we went into the church, which we found very whitewashed and
very Moorish in architecture, but very Spanish in the Blessed Virgins on
most of the altars, dressed in brocades and jewels. A sacristan was
brushing and dusting the place, but he did not bother us, and we went
freely about among the tall candles standing on the floor as well as on
the altars, and bearing each a placard attached with black ribbon, and
dedicated in black letters on silver "To the Repose of This or That" one
among the dead.
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