the flaps of the tent into the darkness and watched--a case of
"Sister Ann! Sister Ann! do you see any one coming?"

[Illustration: ONE OF OUR LAST CAMPS. LOADING THE CAMEL.

[_To face p. 350._]

We had, however, grown tired of looking out, and were just arranging
ourselves on the ground, when familiar noises sounded outside, and
Omar's voice crying joyfully, "Le chameau arrive!"

Perhaps, above all else which was interesting on the road to Mazagan, the
little Arab settlements, composed entirely of tents, interested us most.
In them, was lived the truly nomad, gipsy life of the wandering Arab, who
is a herdsman by heritage, and in following that vocation _a roamer par
excellence_. They live, these Arabs, in tents: the sides are made of
straw and wattle hurdles; over the top is stretched an immense piece of
brown or black camel's-hair cloth. The tents are barely five feet high in
the middle, less at the edges: squat brown mushrooms they look, or
something like the keels of boats turned bottom upwards. All of them were
open in front, "very public" the world would say; which primitive and
open-air mode of living was indeed their great feature. Some of them were
divided off down the middle by a hurdle, thus forming two "rooms": the
hurdles were occasionally faggots, without straw. Around the tents lay
the flocks, chewing the cud or browsing on the scanty grass-land:
children ran out to us with bowls of milk: when the grass gave out within
reach all round, the tents were taken down, the hillsides deserted, and
the families wandered in search of pastures new, carrying a few chickens,
some pots and pans, two or three bundles of rags, and leaving behind a
good many parasites and a bare patch.

Thus Arab life in Southern Morocco--a thriftless, desultory existence,
yet with the charm of continual change and of living with the earth. "To
take no thought for the morrow" is the practice of all Moors, whether
Arabs or Berbers: no Moor spends money on anything which will not bring
him in immediate profit, and this accounts for the fact that trees and
forests are never planted, or schemes started for working mines, or
roads made, or bridges built; even if the capital were forthcoming, what
would be the use of spending money only to be repaid little by little,
year by year?--a man may die before he profits for all his trouble!

After all, argues the Moor, who could wish to alter Morocco? Is it not
perfect as it is?--veritably, "_t