ve, outrivalling the flicker of those simple earth-flames on their
lined and sun-burnt faces. The women who waited on them, all of middle
age, alone remained erect, as they glided about on their bare feet,
carrying bowl and towel from man to man. From the huts and the tents
around came many strange sounds of bird, beast, and baby, for the
cocks were already crowing, as it was growing late,[23] while the
dogs bayed at the shadow of the cactus and the weird shriek of the
night-bird.

[23: A way they have in Barbary.]

"B'ism Illah!" exclaimed the host at each basin ("In the Name of
God!")--as he would ask a blessing--when he finished breaking bread
for his circle, and plunged his first sop in the gravy. "B'ism Illah!"
they all replied, and followed suit in a startlingly sudden silence
wherein naught but the stowing away of food could be heard, till one
of them burnt his fingers by an injudiciously deep dive into the
centre after a toothsome morsel.

In the midst of a sea of broth rose mountains of steamed and buttered
kesk'soo, in the craters of which had been placed the contents of the
stew-pot, the disjointed bones of chickens with onions and abundant
broad beans. The gravy was eaten daintily with sops of bread, conveyed
to the mouth in a masterly manner without spilling a drop, while the
kesk'soo was moulded in the palm of the right hand into convenient
sized balls and shot into the mouth by the thumb. The meat was divided
with the thumb and fingers of the right hand alone, since the left may
touch no food.

At last one by one sat back, his greasy hand outstretched, and after
taking a sip of cold water from the common jug with his left, and
licking his right to prevent the waste of one precious grain, each
washed his hands, rinsed his mouth thrice, polished his teeth with his
right forefinger, and felt ready to begin again, all agreeing that "he
who is not first at the powder, should not be last at the dish."

XXX

THE POLITICAL SITUATION

"A guess of the informed is better than the assurance of the ignorant."

_Moorish Proverb._

Ever since the accession of the present Sultan, Mulai Abd el Aziz IV.,
on his attaining the age of twenty in 1900, Morocco has been more than
ever the focus of foreign designs, both public and private, which have
brought about a much more disturbed condition than under his
father, or even under the subsequent Wazeer Regent. The manifest
friendlessness of the youth, h