a fairly intelligent
boy--Mohammed, a Riffi--and managed to understand a word or two he said.
It had been explained to him by S`lam that we wished to get to the Blue
Pool if possible. Arrived at the river, we found nobody--not being market
day, it was utterly deserted. The current was still swirling in a
forbidding fashion, but Mohammed led the donkey straight in with R.; he
tucked up his clothes, held his yellow slippers high in one hand, and
after some goading they landed on the opposite bank. Mohammed left his
slippers, rode back through the river for me, and in due time I was
deposited on the shingle. Off we set--first by a narrow path, thick on
each side with scented violets, and closed in with the usual
ten-foot-high cane fence. More streams had to be forded, but they were
small and the donkey strong; so, to save time, I sat above his tail,
behind R., and he carried us across in one journey.

So far we were still down on the flats; the hills towered in front of us;
and among the streams, and where the river in its vagaries had often
flowed, there was deposited many a rich bed of fruitful mud, turned into
valuable land, the very soil _par excellence_ for oranges. And they were
all around us--garden after garden, acre after acre, foliage studded with
gold knobs by the million. And among them, and as far as the eye could
reach, up into the gorge between the hills, picturesque white
garden-houses showed through rifts in the half-tropical foliage, or over
hedges of prickly pear and oleander. Fig-trees, a hundred years old, made
faded grey blotches amongst the vivid greenery; the pink bloom of apricot
was stainless against stained-yellow walls. In such a place, the
inexorable realism of the age in which we live, was shaken--spirits
there surely were which should appear.

We passed an old countrywoman with a tiny donkey carrying two great
panniers full of green-stuffs: she was in difficulties, having a wrestle
to make it cross a little stream. Mohammed went to her assistance. Once
over, she climbed on its small back with the help of a stone, putting her
foot on its neck to get into her place.

And now, leaving the orange gardens and their wealth, our path took an
upward turn into a more rugged country, a less fruitful soil. We left a
field of pale blue flax on the left--a "blue pool" indeed; and about this
point the donkey's pack, which had no breastplate, slipped over its tail;
but Mohammed's knife, and some string, a