a very sultry ride, until at last long
lines of red mud walls, many gardens, three mosque towers, and some tall,
dark, green cypress-trees proclaimed Tamsloect--an important village,
possessing a Friday market, an unequalled view of the Atlas, and a saint,
Mulai Abdullah Ben Hassi.

An Arab, Hadj Cadour, is one of the great men in Tamsloect; and to him,
having an introduction, we went. The best hours spent in Morocco were
those lived with certain of the Moors themselves, sharing for a short
time their simple and yet fantastic life, learning something of their
innate courtesy and generous hospitality. Hadj Cadour was a host of the
old aristocratic school. He was out at his garden-house when we reached
the village, entertaining friends at a tea party; and upon our message
reaching him, he sent back a man on a white horse to point out another of
his gardens close at hand, where he suggested that the tents should be
pitched, while R. and I rode out and joined his tea party.

Leaving Omar to superintend the camp, we started off after the rider on
the white horse: he led the way through the village, finally into a
labyrinth of gardens, where we brushed through bearded wheat such as I
have never seen before nor since, which luxuriated with olives,
fruit-trees of all sorts, and pale pink monthly roses. Presently in the
midst of the semi-wilderness a little white house intervened, half buried
in trees, and close to it, in the shade, under an olive, was gathered
Hadj Cadour's tea party, six or eight dignified Arabs, in those perfectly
washed and blanched garments which so fit their solemn, dignified
manners, their sad and intellectual type of faces: not that Moors are
necessarily either of the two last; but they look it--that is all.

A great tea-kettle, as usual, loomed in the background; carpets and thick
red Morocco leather cushions made seats for the members of the charmed
circle: we reclined there with the rest, talking, as far as a few Arabic
words would carry us, of our starting-point, our destination, the road,
the rivers, the weather, Hadj Cadour helping us out, one and all
interested and anxious to be understood and to understand. Our host
dispensed _sherrub de minat_, the wine of the country, made from grapes;
the little dome-shaped pewter teapot was there, with its fond
associations of Morocco, together with the copper tray and circle of
diminutive painted glasses; a gorgeous indolent sun poured down beyond
the pat