pean traders were hurried back in broad
daylight. We met the basha gravely pacing the sands on a white mule with
scarlet trappings--of all stout officials, in a country where it is a sin
and a shame on the part of one in office to be thin, the stoutest. His
broad body overshadowed the big mule, and his two little legs might have
been a pair of ninepins below a vast cask draped in white.

To the south of Mogador lies first the Sus country and then Wadnoon,
dividing the Morocco which is partly known to Europeans, from the Sahara,
which nobody knows. The Sus may be said to be practically unknown, and it
is distinctly "forbidden" land, through which only two or three
travellers have ever passed--Oskar Lenz, Gatell, Gerhard Rohlfs, and
possibly a missionary; but they were all disguised and went in terror of
their lives; nor have they left satisfactory records of their
experiences.

[Illustration: AFTER RAIN IN MOGADOR.

[_To face p. 274._]

And yet the Sus is comparatively close to Mogador, with which it
trades; mules from the Sus were always in the Mogador market; camels were
coming in every week with wool, camels' hair, goat-skins, hides, beeswax,
a little gold dust, ostrich feathers, gum-arabic, cattle, and all the
produce of the Sahara; while the Berbers from the Sus were interesting
above any Riffis or tribesmen with whom we had hitherto met.

Their country is supposed to contain rich mines: it is said to be fertile
and thickly populated; it is not loyal--on the contrary, it is
ill-affected to its liege lord, the Sultan; it is fanatical to a degree,
and largely swayed by a form of government best expressed by its
title--Council of Forty. In return for their own goods the Berbers from
the Sus carry back into their country all sorts of Manchester goods,
powder, tea, sugar, cheap German cutlery, and the like.

These same Berbers, of unknown origin, were, so the Kor[=a]n tells us,
packed up by King David, in olden times, in sacks, and carried out of
Syria on camels, since he wished to see them no more. Arrived somewhere
near the Atlas Mountains, their leader called out in the Berber tongue
"Sus!" which means "Let down!" "Empty out!" So the exiles were turned out
of their sacks, and the country in which they settled is called Sus to
this day.

Wadnoon trades to a great extent with the Soudan, and Mogador receives an
immense amount of its ostrich feathers: slaves are the most important
article of commerce in Wadnoon,