enamelled eyes of a basalt bust.
The eunuch delivered us to other negresses, and we entered a labyrinth
of inner passages and patios, all murmuring and dripping with water.
Passing down long corridors where slaves in dim greyish garments
flattened themselves against the walls, we caught glimpses of great dark
rooms, laundries, pantries, bakeries, kitchens, where savoury things
were brewing and stewing, and where more negresses, abandoning their
pots and pans, came to peep at us from the threshold. In one corner, on
a bench against a wall hung with matting, grey parrots in tall cages
were being fed by a slave.

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

A clan of mountaineers and their caid]

A narrow staircase mounted to a landing where a princess out of an Arab
fairy-tale awaited us. Stepping softly on her embroidered slippers she
led us to the next landing, where another golden-slippered being smiled
out on us, a little girl this one, blushing and dimpling under a
jewelled diadem and pearl-woven braids. On a third landing a third
damsel appeared, and encircled by the three graces we mounted to the
tall _mirador_ in the central tower from which we were to look down at
the coming ceremony. One by one, our little guides, kicking off their
golden shoes, which a slave laid neatly outside the door, led us on soft
bare feet into the upper chamber of the harem.

It was a large room, enclosed on all sides by a balcony glazed with
panes of brightly-coloured glass. On a gaudy modern Rabat carpet stood
gilt armchairs of florid design and a table bearing a commercial bronze
of the "art goods" variety. Divans with muslin-covered cushions were
ranged against the walls and down an adjoining gallery-like apartment
which was otherwise furnished only with clocks. The passion for clocks
and other mechanical contrivances is common to all unmechanical races,
and every chief's palace in North Africa contains a collection of
time-pieces which might be called striking if so many had not ceased to
go. But those in the Sultan's harem of Rabat are remarkable for the fact
that, while designed on current European models, they are proportioned
in size to the Imperial dignity, so that a Dutch "grandfather" becomes a
wardrobe, and the box-clock of the European mantelpiece a cupboard that
has to be set on the floor. At the end of this avenue of time-pieces a
European double-bed with a bright silk quilt covered with Nottingham
lace sto