sured, tracks marked, not from church to
church as in Spain, nor from village to village as in England, but from
saint-house to saint-house, each of which is village-green, club, or
public-house rolled into one, where the men gossip, the pious read,
travellers halt, offerings are brought the dead saint, and sick children
arrive to be healed--all at a little whitewashed building with a dome
like an oven outside, and a horse-shoe arch, an olive- or a fig- or a
palm-tree, a flag-staff hung with morsels of rag, and often a spring of
water. At four cross-tracks, instead of sign-posts, heaps of stones,
cairns, are to be found, placed in such a way as to indicate the
direction in which the next saint's tomb lies.

A saint-house or two spot the green plain below the cemetery, which
merges into the seven miles of flats stretching from the city to the sea,
the haunt of wild duck, plover, and snipe, among wastes of coarse grass,
marsh, and red tangle. Coils of grey river lie upon the flats: the very
flatness over which the stream snakes is at once most strong--serene.

As we walked down the hillside, a brown figure upon a flat-topped tomb
was silhouetted against the plain: he raised himself, and then again
prostrated his body to the earth, his face set to the distant belt of
blue sea, worshipping towards Mecca.

That afternoon we visited Semsar, a village two or three hours' ride from
Tetuan, up in the mountains to the west. R. had a sedate brown mule with
no idea of exerting himself: my mount was a clever little grey, nervous
and rather handy with his heels, nearly kicking me more than once when I
dismounted or mounted carelessly. We rode, as usual, on the high-peaked
Moorish saddles, covered with scarlet cloth, such as every Moor uses--the
stirrup-leathers of twisted scarlet silk, several thick saddle-cloths
underneath, the girths never drawn, the saddle only kept from slipping
over head or tail by scarlet britching and breastplate. It is impossible
to mount unless the stirrup is held. After repeating the sacramental word
"B`ism Allah" (a Moor mounts and dismounts in the name of God), with a
man at his stirrups, he sinks without an effort into his saddle, amidst a
furbelow of white robes, which he has afterwards arranged carefully for
him. Possibly for this reason he gets on and off as seldom as possible,
hugging the convenient maxim, common among the Moors, that mounting and
dismounting fatigue an animal more than carrying a b