ay home from
Elbali. The merchants are grave men, they move softly and slowly on
their fat slippered feet, pausing from time to time in confidential
talk. At last they stop before a house wall with a low blue door barred
by heavy hasps of iron. The servant lifts the lamp and knocks. There is
a long delay, then, with infinite caution, the door is opened a few
inches, and another lifted light shines faintly on lustrous tiled walls,
and on the face of a woman slave who quickly veils herself. Evidently
the master is a man of standing, and the house well guarded. The two
merchants touch each other on the right shoulder, one of them passes in,
and his friend goes on through the moonlight, his servant's lantern
dancing ahead.

But here we are in an open space looking down one of the descents to El
Attarine. A misty radiance washes the tall houses, the garden-walls, the
archways, even the moonlight does not whiten Fez, but only turns its
gray to tarnished silver. Overhead in a tower window a single light
twinkles: women's voices rise and fall on the roofs. In a rich man's
doorway slaves are sleeping, huddled on the tiles. A cock crows from
somebody's dunghill, a skeleton dog prowls by for garbage.

Everywhere is the loud rush or the low crooning of water, and over every
wall comes the scent of jasmine and rose. Far off, from the red
purgatory between the walls, sounds the savage thrum-thrum of a negro
orgy, here all is peace and perfume. A minaret springs up between the
roofs like a palm, and from its balcony the little white figure bends
over and drops a blessing on all the loveliness and all the squalor.

IV

MARRAKECH

I

THE WAY THERE

There are countless Arab tales of evil Djinns who take the form of
sandstorms and hot winds to overwhelm exhausted travellers.

In spite of the new French road between Rabat and Marrakech the memory
of such tales rises up insistently from every mile of the level red
earth and the desolate stony stretches of the _bled_. As long as the
road runs in sight of the Atlantic breakers they give the scene
freshness and life, but when it bends inland and stretches away across
the wilderness the sense of the immensity and immobility of Africa
descends on one with an intolerable oppression.

The road traverses no villages, and not even a ring of nomad tents is
visible in the distance on the wide stretches of arable land. At
infrequent intervals our motor passed a train of laden mule