great deal of assurance in the whole. The world
used him well. Moors ride everywhere, if they possess anything with four
legs. Why should they give themselves the fatigue of walking? But besides
that, they are horsemen and most at home on a horse, while their country
is not one to travel in on foot.

Having decided that the river was fordable, and that we ought to be able
to ride across it, we walked back by way of the city, and went in to tea
with a Moor, ordering a donkey to be sent out the next day to Jinan
Dolero, which should take us across to our El Dorado. The Moor who
entertained us was a certain Ci Hamed Ghralmia, the eldest son of a
Government official who had fattened physically and financially on the
Customs, and whose fine house represented so many perquisites and bribes,
and so much pared off the lump sum which went annually up to the Sultan.

It was as luxurious a house as Eastern could wish: soft Rabat carpets,
old Fez silk hangings, round the four-post beds, standing back in
recesses in the room into which our host led us,--hangings such as even
Fez can no longer produce; such silk is not made. One piece, which was
quite as handsome in its way, was made years ago in Tetuan, from Tetuan
silk-worms, reared on the slopes outside the Mulberry Gate--spun, dyed,
and woven in Tetuan.

Couches and divans filled up the corners; glowing colours and fine snowy
linen abounded. It was a house in which to spend a sleepy Sabbath
afternoon on a hot day, if it must be spent indoors. Cool air blew
through the high rooms; the splash and ripple of fountains rose and fell
in the cool marble patio below, and echoed up the tiled staircase; while
back, far in the shade of the secluded rooms, among avenues of pillars,
vistas of light and shade, women like butterflies, in mauve and yellow
and white, rose from some soft scented divan and flitted across. And in
the centre of it all, a little king, Ci Hamed Ghralmia--a pale,
cafe-au-lait complexioned man, who looked as if life had never shown him
one of its angles. He was fat and lineless: soft white hands, fleshy
ankles, no knots of muscle in so well-turned-out a mould of cream, not a
spot, not a flush, no sign of liver; the lips slightly suggested
sensuality, and there was a line of cruelty round the mouth, but no
further indication of self-indulgence; he might have lived on sugar and
chicken coos-coosoo all his life, and altered in nothing but size since
he was a year old, ex