es and black
bodies and smoking fry which hangs like a fog under the close roofing of
the _souks_.

And suddenly one leaves the crowd and the turbid air for one of those
quiet corners that are like the back-waters of the bazaars, a small
square where a vine stretches across a shop-front and hangs ripe
clusters of grapes through the reeds. In the patterning of grape-shadows
a very old donkey, tethered to a stone-post, dozes under a pack-saddle
that is never taken off; and near by, in a matted niche, sits a very old
man in white. This is the chief of the Guild of "morocco" workers of
Marrakech, the most accomplished craftsman in Morocco in the preparing
and using of the skins to which the city gives its name. Of these sleek
moroccos, cream-white or dyed with cochineal or pomegranate skins, are
made the rich bags of the Chleuh dancing-boys, the embroidered slippers
for the harem, the belts and harnesses that figure so largely in
Moroccan trade--and of the finest, in old days, were made the
pomegranate-red morocco bindings of European bibliophiles.

From this peaceful corner one passes into the barbaric splendor of a
_souk_ hung with innumerable plumy bunches of floss silk--skeins of
citron yellow, crimson, grasshopper green and pure purple. This is the
silk-spinners' quarter, and next to it comes that of the dyers, with
great seething vats into which the raw silk is plunged, and ropes
overhead where the rainbow masses are hung out to dry.

Another turn leads into the street of the metal-workers and armourers,
where the sunlight through the thatch flames on round flanks of beaten
copper or picks out the silver bosses of ornate powder-flasks and
pistols, and near by is the _souk_ of the plough-shares, crowded with
peasants in rough Chleuh cloaks who are waiting to have their archaic
ploughs repaired, and that of the smiths, in an outer lane of mud huts
where negroes squat in the dust and sinewy naked figures in tattered
loincloths bend over blazing coals. And here ends the maze of the
bazaars.

IV

THE AGDAL

One of the Almohad Sultans who, during their hundred years of empire,
scattered such great monuments from Seville to the Atlas, felt the need
of coolness about his southern capital, and laid out the olive-yards of
the Agdal.

To the south of Marrakech the Agdal extends for many acres between the
outer walls of the city and the edge of the palm-oasis--a continuous
belt of silver foliage traversed by deep re