o the country of the argan-tree,
that most interesting and unique specimen, which flourishes in this
corner of Morocco, covering an area about two hundred miles long and
forty wide, and growing nowhere else in the known world. Southern Morocco
would be lost indeed without argan oil, which is used for cooking
purposes as a substitute for butter, and of which we had with us a large
supply. The oil is extracted from the fruit of the tree: at the end of
March it should be fit to gather, looking much like a large olive, and
possessed of a green fleshy husk, greedily eaten by camels, goats, sheep,
and oxen. Thus, as well as gathering the nuts themselves off the ground,
the country people allow their flocks to feed upon the fruit: having
driven them home, the animals chew the cud, disgorging the argan nuts,
which are collected, and eventually cracked by women and children in
order to obtain oil.

The average height of the tree is twenty-five feet, but its rugged side
branches will cover a space of seventy feet. Gnarled and twisted, the
bark is a little like crocodile-skin, and forms in squares: the trunk has
a way of folding upon itself, too, as it grows--slowly; for a large tree
may be three hundred years old, and in consequence its wood is immensely
hard. The argan is more or less tropical: though a tree has been known to
live against a south wall in England, it was killed by the first severe
winter.

Among the argans, little oxen were ploughing the red rich soil of the
vale through which we rode; it was watered by a brook, and real hedges of
pomegranate, out in brilliant flower, divided the fields. In one of these
some Arabs were digging carrots; in another homely potatoes, the first we
had seen, were doing remarkably well.

By this time the camel and attendants had been overtaken and left far
behind, and since we had passed our heavy baggage no other forms of life
seemed to be travelling along the same trail as our own: certainly a
countryman joined himself to us, partly to point out our direction,
partly for the sake of company; he held his stick behind his shoulders
and stepped out well, but not for long. And after he had left we only saw
a few women in the distance. These were often on donkeys, and some
carried water-pots on their heads; but not one of them was "a beast of
burden" in the sense of the women round Tetuan--not one crouched under an
overpowering load of faggots or charcoal.

As we jogged on, the great b