[=i]f he can never be dispossessed of his wealth. His white house
and cypress-trees stand out prominently in the village we had just left;
throughout his gardens he has built a succession of water-towers, which
irrigate his land; he is British-protected, and as important a man in the
south as the French-protected Wazeer of Wazan is in the north.

All this time we were riding steadily towards Marrakesh, interest
increasing with every step as we neared the city, to visit which we had
left Mogador about ten days before.

That last day's march was not an interesting one: the great Atlas, upon
which we had now turned our backs, were no longer to be seen, on account
of clouds which the last night's storm had brought upon them; the plain
over which we rode possessed a deadly monotony, for we were not entering
Marrakesh upon its best side, where gardens upon gardens of palm-trees
stretch beyond the city gates for miles and miles, but our road from
Tamsloect was prosaic and dull. Certainly we crossed some of the
wonderful underground canals, which carry water five and ten miles, from
springs in the country, into the city--about whose origin nothing
whatever is known, tradition remaining silent as to any builder. These
great works are merely water-ways tunnelled through the solid earth, not
at any great distance from the surface: along their courses the streams
are conducted for great distances. There are openings at intervals which
ventilate the tunnels: these are kept clean and easily examined by means
of the same. The whole arrangement is very rough, very primitive, but
perfectly answers the purpose for which it was made.

The crops which we left behind us at every mile looked well, and it was
to be hoped would soon make good the failure of the preceding crop: that
failure had accounted for the skinny children and lean women whom we had
met, and was the reason of the country people's continuous digging for
ayerna root, and washing the same by the roadside and in so many
villages.

Meanwhile, Marrakesh and its adobe walls, of a sad yellow-pink tone, grew
nearer and nearer, till at last the long line of crumbling tapia was but
a short distance off, and the Bab-el-Roub, a massive gateway, plainly to
be seen. Just outside the walls, Mr. Miller, one of the missionaries, met
us: he had one piece of news, which carried with it regret wherever it
was heard across the length and breadth of the British Empire--the death
of Cecil Rhod