f our arrival rang
with nightingales and bulbuls; there was a scent of heaven, an undertone
of racing waters.

[Illustration: SHIPS OF THE DESERT WE PASS ON THE MARCH.

[_To face p. 308._]

Just as we were packed up to start, the khaylifa sent and expressed
thanks for our medicine, and asked that as a favour we would see his
wives, one of whom was ill. They were found in mud rooms, dark and dirty,
most uninteresting in themselves. One stout "lady" had a swelled neck,
the other had cataract: both wished to be prescribed for. I recommended,
through Omar, bathing the swelled neck: it was necessary from a
cleanliness point of view. From the same point of view I shook hands
hurriedly and departed, climbed into the saddle, and was soon far away
from the kasbah at Sheshaoua.

CHAPTER XI

A PARTING MONA--FORDING SHESHAOUA RIVER--JARS OF FOOD--FIRST SIGHT OF
MARRAKESH--A PERILOUS CROSSING--RIDE INTO MARRAKESH--THE SLAVE MARKET.

CHAPTER XI

"We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:

Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:

Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told."

W. B. YEATS.

WE were once more upon the march; and yet all links with the kasbah were
not broken, for we had gone but a short way when a servant ran after us,
carrying a familiar dish, known from afar--a parting mona. Laid at our
feet, we tasted, as courtesy demanded, a coos-coosoo made of grated
almonds, powdered sugar, and cream--a sweet which cloys at an early hour
in the day, though to Moorish servants, at any and every moment of their
lives, it is as caviare to the few. A circle was formed round the dish:
in two minutes, all that was left, was "an aching china blank."

Quantity rather than quality distinguishes Moorish cookery. The rich
man's dishes are more or less like the poor man's, only that he has six
times as many; indeed, there are said to be dishes of coos-coosoo which
seven men can barely carry. The Sultan's own cuisine is quite simple,
better served, and more of it perhaps, than his subjects', but otherwise
exactly the same.

Having disposed of the mona, our cavalcade started, and we rode down to
the Sheshaoua River, still in heavy f