his palm-leaf wallet was on his back, with letters, possibly
some bread, a match or two, and some hemp, inside. He was a long-limbed
fellow, bronzed and bearded, with the vacant, glassy eyes of a
kif-smoker; for kif kept him going often instead of food, and helped him
to swing along day after day, untiring, like a camel, sleeping little,
praying occasionally at a saint's tomb, fording the streams, trotting
over the plains, his eyes fixed on the horizon--"eating the miles," as
Arabs say. This particular rekass left Marrakesh on Monday morning at
ten, and reached Mogador on Wednesday afternoon at three, doing his two
hundred and seventy miles in forty-nine hours.

When Sir William Kirby Green died suddenly on an embassy in Marrakesh, a
rekass carried the news to Mazagan, a hundred and sixty miles, in
thirty-two hours; but the Vice-Consul told me that upon reaching his
office the man fell down--he could not stand to tell the news.

We rode on, praying for a breeze which never came: the sun literally
sizzled on the baked desert, the rocks gave out an oven-like heat, and
the rarefied air oscillated over the wastes. It was too hazy for more
than glimpses of the Atlas and their snows: as far as we could see
stretched only illimitable drab-coloured plain, broken by the flat-topped
hills. At last we stumbled along to the top of a ridge; and there,
strange and delightful sight, away in the distance lay a green basin,
trees, no mirage, but the valley of Sheshaoua.

Sheshaoua is a district ruled by a powerful governor, whose great kasbah
lies somewhere about the centre, dominating a large village. The district
is watered by a stream from the Atlas Mountains, which accounts for its
fertility; for, except where irrigation is possible, there can be no
cultivation in this sahara: wide ditches conduct the stream across the
length and breadth of the province, resulting in a green ribbon upon the
face of the plain, the fields being edged with little hard mud-banks,
keeping the water evenly distributed over the surface when the crops need
flooding.

To have lived upon sun-burn is to appreciate the colour green: the march
lost its monotony and some of its heat, when green lay in front and came
nearer with every stride. Two hours and a half were short: the end of
that time found us riding between corn-fields, crossing streamlet after
streamlet watering the vegetation, and at last jogging over real turf,
instead of clattering on stones, w