sand camels have sometimes come into
Mogador in one day. The Customs House officer was at breakfast, and we
awaited his coming by our baggage. At last there was a stir among the
many hands who had carried our things up from the boat, and the most
solemn and dignified individual conceivable slowly sailed upon the scene,
way being made for his flowing robes, which were white as a sheet of best
glazed "cream-laid" before the pen marks it. I handed him our pass-paper
from the Customs House officer at Tangier, feeling like a humble subject
laying a petition before a monarch: he slowly unfolded it, and more
slowly searched for and produced a pair of spectacles in a silver case.
Lastly, having read the document and reviewed our pile, he "passed" it
with an impressive wave of his hand. He then took a seat, a Moor minion
on each side: we filed solemnly past him, shaking him by the hand. A
new-born infant has not such a guileless face as that bland Arab.

We took up quarters in the Suera Hotel, managed by a capable Scotchwoman
and her husband, who had once farmed on the veldt. Early next day I rode
to Palm-tree House on a little horse belonging to the hotel: out by the
Beach Gate, we cantered along the sands close to the sea, crossed the
river, left the patron saint-house of Mogador on our left hand, bore
upwards across the sandy dunes, and struck inland over hard calcareous
rock, where, in the teeth of the wind, the sand never lies. It was
blowing, that day, a hot desert wind, which in a naturally hot place only
makes one the hotter: with the wind, came a good deal of fine sand, on a
really windy day making riding almost impossible.

Palm-tree House is a hotel four miles south-east of Mogador, in the
loneliest of situations, with the advantage of a view and an open, wild
country all round: it has none of the drawbacks of the city; it is
breezy, wild, and bare. Having reached the top of the dunes, we struck
off in more or less of a bee-line for Palm-tree House, still riding over
soft sand, where nothing but miles upon miles of _r`tam_ (white broom)
grew, lovely when in flower, of which we were destined to see almost more
than enough before we left Southern Morocco.

The horses ploughed their way through the white track; two or three
butterflies hovered about the r`tam; chameleons scuttled occasionally
over the path; a tortoise crept along. There were not a few locusts about
either, looking like handsome little dragon-flies on th