le, or like a series of Roman
aqueducts built side by side and joined into one structure. Below this
indescribable ruin the arid ground sloped down to an artificial water
which was surely the lake that the Sultan had made for his
boating-parties; and beyond it more red earth stretched away to more
walls and gates, with glimpses of abandoned palaces and huge crumbling
angle-towers.

The vastness, the silence, the catastrophic desolation of the place,
were all the more impressive because of the relatively recent date of
the buildings. As Moulay-Ismael had dealt with Volubilis, so time had
dealt with his own Meknez; and the destruction which it had taken
thousands of lash-driven slaves to inflict on the stout walls of the
Roman city, neglect and abandonment had here rapidly accomplished. But
though the sun-baked clay of which the impatient Sultan built his
pleasure-houses will not suffer comparison with the firm stones of
Rome, "the high Roman fashion" is visible in the shape and outline of
these ruins. What they are no one knows. In spite of Ezziani's text
(written when the place was already partly destroyed) archaeologists
disagree as to the uses of the crypt of rose-flushed clay whose twenty
rows of gigantic arches are so like an alignment of Roman aqueducts.
Were these the vaulted granaries, or the subterranean reservoirs under
the three miles of stabling which housed the twelve thousand horses? The
stables, at any rate, were certainly near this spot, for the lake
adjoins the ruins as in the chronicler's description; and between it and
old Meknez, behind walls within walls, lie all that remains of the fifty
palaces with their cupolas, gardens, mosques and baths.

This inner region is less ruined than the mysterious vaulted structure,
and one of the palaces, being still reserved for the present Sultan's
use, cannot be visited; but we wandered unchallenged through desert
courts, gardens of cypress and olive where dried fountains and painted
summer-houses are falling into dust, and barren spaces enclosed in long
empty facades. It was all the work of an eager and imperious old man,
who, to realize his dream quickly, built in perishable materials, but
the design, the dimensions, the whole conception, show that he had not
only heard of Versailles but had looked with his own eyes on Volubilis.

[Illustration: _From a photograph from the Service des Beaux-Arts au
Maroc_

Meknez--the ruins of the palace of Moulay-Ismael]