es. Under the Bab-el-Roub we rode into the city of crumbling
walls and silent sandy roadways: somewhat of a deserted city, the great
southern capital appeared to be at first; but then we were nowhere near
its heart, and the half of it is gardens and quiet houses, while a small
part only, is wholly full of vitality: the whole is crumbling to pieces,
and strange of all strangest cities ever seen.

We rode straight to Kaid Maclean's house, lent us by Lady Maclean--the
best house in Morocco City, over-looking one of the many market-places,
and that open space in which story-tellers and snake-charmers, surrounded
by a dense circle of admirers, cater to an attentive throng. The house
was empty, and we "camped" in several of the rooms, lunching in a long
gallery which looked straight out on to the Atlas Mountains: the mules
went into a capacious stable; the servants made themselves comfortable in
the kitchens. It is hard to find house-room in Marrakesh: of course a
hotel is unheard of, nor is camping-ground to be met with easily. There
are no foreign consuls in this far-off city, and no English element
beyond the two or three missionaries who live there. Travellers have
generally to depend upon the loan of some house for the time being, from
a holy Shar[=i]f or Moor of some standing; but the house may be anywhere,
and comfortable or otherwise. Since the Sultan was at Fez, his army and
his commander-in-chief, Kaid Maclean, were at Fez too: hence the reason
of the Macleans' house standing empty, within which we were so fortunate
as to find ourselves.

Marrakesh cannot be described: it must be seen. It is more suggestive,
more intangible, more elusive--that is to say, its Eastern medley of a
population is so, and its crumbling tapia-walled houses are so--than any
other Moorish city. More ghosts should stalk the half-deserted yellow
roadways of Marrakesh, more mysteries be shrouded within the windowless
walls, than a man of Western civilization could conceive.

It is a vast city--other writers have chronicled the number of square
miles which it accounts for--and yet, in spite of its size, the sum-total
of souls it contains is not overwhelming. There are gardens everywhere,
stretch after stretch of palm-trees, acre after acre of fruit-trees, and
wedged among them all, lie the flat roofs, swarm the endless throng which
spells humanity; and the oddest, most varied humanity--Arabs and negroes,
men from the Sus, from the Sahara, from