of which a flight, chiefly flocks of finches,
invariably travelled over the little terraces of fruit-trees towards the
river, taking our garden on the way, and feeding there for a while. A
white jasmine almost hid our white steps and pillars: a rose grew with
lavish prodigality; as Jinan Dolero stood there, in the middle of the
Garden of the Slothful, a certain imperious dignity was given to the
little white-walled structure by means of its magnificent situation.

Sometimes we breakfasted in the garden: we were never in to lunch on fine
days, but rode and walked all over the country, occasionally with the
lady missionaries or Mr. Bewicke, but oftener alone with the big grey
donkey and a boy. There were Moors to see in Tetuan, and always something
of interest: we came away from that corner of Morocco without having got
through half of what might have been done. To live in a country, adopting
some of its ways and imbibing a little of its spirit, is the only
satisfactory way to "travel." Hotels with home conventionalities and
English tourists never amount to the same thing. Either camp out or
settle down for a month or two in a hut, with one of the country people
to cook. There must be sport, or agriculture, or village characters, or
architecture, or botany, or geology to study: bird-life and bird-watching
are never-ending interests; the fields are never empty. Only by living
its own life, can the country and its ways unfold themselves, and become
understood and cared for, by the traveller who has time for, and a love
of, such things.

As a whole, and seen in January before spring has begun, around Tetuan it
is a tired and brownish-looking country: its colour is bleached and dried
out of it, and it has the air of a sun-dried, wind-blown land, patched
with pieces of brilliant greenery where corn has been sown near water.
And yet it possesses the charm of strength and repose which simplicity
gives; for it has been worried by man but little, rather allowed to
straggle through the centuries at its own sweet will.

In the evening every Friday, to mark the Mussulman's Sabbath, the sunset
gun boomed and echoed among the opposite mountains. Watching the grey
turreted walls of the Kasbah bitten out against a primrose sky, with
watch in hand, at last the weekly flash of red, then a puff of brown
smoke shot out of the wall, and last of all, a reverberating roar, tossed
backwards and forwards among the hills. It is long before the "