yes, the steely blue cactus, the white cities and the
glaring light, the mystery and the fatalism which intensify the air, are
alike oddly inevitable and incomprehensible to a European. The other side
of the closed door has always constituted, for the wandering vagrants
among mankind, their hearts' desire. For them there is still Morocco; and
the door will be shut in their faces again and again by a people and a
faith and customs which they can never understand. And though it be
useless they will still go on, because it seems the best thing.

About six weeks before 1902 was due, Rose A. Bainbridge and myself left
behind us the last outpost of England--Gibraltar--with its cluster of
civilization round the bottom of the great Rock. Four hours brought us
across the Straits; and seen from the deck of the dirty little _Gibel
Musa_, on to which we had changed from a P. & O. at Gibraltar, Morocco
shaped itself into a rugged country, ridge behind ridge of low hills and
jagged mountains cutting the sky-line. A long white sand-bank lying back
in a bay on the African shore, broken at one end by irregular vegetation,
gradually developed upon its slopes a yellowish-white, fantastic city,
which resolved itself into Tangier.

Landing at Tangier among vociferating Moors has been described often
enough, and needs no further enlargement.

The next morning, November 13, 1901, found us sitting over coffee and an
omelette out of doors, on a little balcony opening off the hotel Villa
Valentina, over-looking the road to Fez, and facing the broad, blue
Straits which divided us from Europe.

It was like a June morning at home, soft and balmy: the city dropped from
us down to the beach, and the sun poured upon the flat-roofed houses,
coloured yellow to pale cream or washed-out blue, alternating with a
lavish coat of glaring whitewash.

Tangier is an example of structure without architecture; at the same time
there is a certain fitness in the crude Moorish buildings, whose flat
expanse of wall is unbroken either by windows or ornament: they are
simple and "reserved." Gleaming in high light under an equally light sky,
they huddle almost one on top of the other, built upon every available
square yard inside the "papery" old city wall, which looks as if cannon
would blow it away. Patches of blue sea break the white city outline, and
the towers of the mosques rise above it all: their tesselated surfaces,
tiled in shades of green and polished by t