ess and draughts
sitting in the front of a shop; will drink green tea. Whatever he does is
done without haste, and towards evening he strolls serenely, with many
interruptions, in the direction of his own house.

The climate of Morocco has never any of the brisk, freezing "grip" of a
hard English winter, but rather tends towards encouraging indolence. In
Tangier itself energetic English visitors find little superabundant scope
for action: naturally enough, the residents, whom an enervating summer or
two shears of much of the vitality with which they first landed, end in
settling down into an enjoyable, mild routine. There is, however,
shooting and a little pig-sticking for who will; but guns may not be
brought into the country, and no European would be allowed to exploit its
_nullahs_: if not killed, he would be turned back and escorted into
trodden ways.

The principal day's excursion from Tangier is out to Cape Spartel and
back again: before we left the place we started early one morning with
this end in view, taking a donkey and boy carrying a camera, lunch,
etc.--first along a cobbled roadway of which Tangier is immensely proud,
across the river by a new bridge, and up the Mountain. The Mountain is
the summer abode of Tangier, and shady houses and gardens civilize what
was once a wild hill, in the days when our great British minister, Sir
John Hay, did an unprecedented thing, and built himself a house there.

Forty years ago no Christian was safe outside Tangier without a guard,
and it is largely to Sir John Hay's fearless trust in the honour of the
Moor that the change is due. It may still be unwise to walk in lonely
places after dark, or to become involved in a street row; for if one
ruffian is excited to throw a stone, thirty will follow suit, and
Europeans have thus been stoned to death. But those who live out in the
Mountain and visitors to Spartel have nothing to fear in these days in
the shape of attack and robbery.

It was about ten o'clock when we left behind us the leggy remains of a
Roman aqueduct over the river, and, having climbed the Mountain, broke
into open ground, stretching far away at the top. The cobbled road
resolved itself into an unsophisticated path; the stiff cane fences,
shutting out all but the tree-tops in the gardens from view, came to an
end; and we were in a breeze off the Atlantic, on undulating hills
covered with short scrub, gum-cistus, arbutus, tall white heather,
oleander, and