arry Maclean, to whom it was
presented by the fantastic Abd-el-Aziz when the Caid was his favourite
companion as well as his military adviser.

At the suggestion of the municipal officials we mounted the stairs and
looked down on the packed square. There can be no more Oriental sight
this side of the Atlas and the Sahara. The square is surrounded by low
mud-houses, fondaks, cafes, and the like. In one corner, near the
archway leading into the _souks_, is the fruit-market, where the
red-gold branches of unripe dates[A] for animal fodder are piled up in
great stacks, and dozens of donkeys are coming and going, their panniers
laden with fruits and vegetables which are being heaped on the ground in
gorgeous pyramids: purple egg-plants, melons, cucumbers, bright orange
pumpkins, mauve and pink and violet onions, rusty crimson
pomegranates and the gold grapes of Sefrou and Sale, all mingled with
fresh green sheaves of mint and wormwood.

[Footnote A: Dates do not ripen in Morocco.]

[Illustration: _From a photograph from "France-Maroc"_

Marrakech--a fondak]

In the middle of the square sit the story-tellers' turbaned audiences.
Beyond these are the humbler crowds about the wild-ringleted
snake-charmers with their epileptic gestures and hissing incantations,
and farther off, in the densest circle of all, we could just discern the
shaved heads and waving surpliced arms of the dancing-boys. Under an
archway near by an important personage in white muslin, mounted on a
handsome mule and surrounded by his attendants, sat with motionless face
and narrowed eyes gravely following the movements of the dancers.

Suddenly, as we stood watching the extraordinary animation of the scene,
a reddish light overspread it, and one of our companions exclaimed:
"Ah--a dust-storm!"

In that very moment it was upon us: a red cloud rushing across the
square out of nowhere, whirling the date-branches over the heads of the
squatting throngs, tumbling down the stacks of fruits and vegetables,
rooting up the canvas awnings over the lemonade-sellers' stalls and
before the cafe doors, huddling the blinded donkeys under the walls of
the fondak, and stripping to the hips the black slave-girls scudding
home from the _souks_.

Such a blast would instantly have scattered any western crowd, but "the
patient East" remained undisturbed, rounding its shoulders before the
storm and continuing to follow attentively the motions of the dancers
and the turns