CHAPTER V

IN RED MARRAKESH

Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai,
Whose portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp
Abode his destined hour and went his way.

_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam._

There are certain cities that cannot be approached for the first time by
any sympathetic traveller without a sense of solemnity and reverence that
is not far removed from awe. Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Damascus, and
Jerusalem may be cited as examples; each in its turn has filled me with
great wonder and deep joy. But all of these are to be reached nowadays by
the railway, that great modern purge of sensibility. Even Jerusalem is not
exempt. A single line stretches from Jaffa by the sea to the very gates of
the Holy City, playing hide-and-seek among the mountains of Judaea by the
way, because the Turk was too poor to tunnel a direct path.

In Morocco, on the other hand, the railway is still unknown. He who seeks
any of the country's inland cities must take horse or mule, camel or
donkey, or, as a last resource, be content with a staff to aid him, and
walk. Whether he fare to Fez, the city of Mulai Idrees, in which, an old
writer assures us, "all the beauties of the earth are united"; or to
Mequinez, where great Mulai Ismail kept a stream of human blood flowing
constantly from his palace that all might know he ruled; or to Red
Marrakesh, which Yusuf ibn Tachfin built nine hundred years ago,--his own
exertion must convoy him. There must be days and nights of scant fare and
small comfort, with all those hundred and one happenings of the road that
make for pleasant memories. So far as I have been able to gather in the
nine years that have passed since I first visited Morocco, one road is
like another road, unless you have the Moghrebbin Arabic at your command
and can go off the beaten track in Moorish dress. Walter Harris, the
resourceful traveller and _Times_ correspondent, did this when he sought
the oases of Tafilalt, so also, in his fashion, did R.B. Cunninghame
Graham when he tried in vain to reach Tarudant, and set out the record of
his failure in one of the most fascinating travel books published since
_Eothen_.[17]

For the rank and file of us the Government roads and the harmless
necessary soldier must suffice, until the Gordian knot of Morocco's future
has been untied or cut. Then perhaps, as a result of French pacific
penetration, flying railway trains load