Draa, Berber hillmen, tribesmen
from the Atlas, a tumultuous multitude, a hive of bees of whom no census
has ever been made. We were among them all, the first time we rode
through the city. No one walks in Marrakesh: as a matter of fact I did
later on, often enough, sometimes alone, getting somewhat jostled in the
narrow ways--beyond that in no way inconvenienced. But every one who can,
is on a mule or a long-tailed countrybred, pushing along at a foot's
pace, crying out now and then, and avoiding this pair of black toes,
that coffee-coloured bare heel.

Beyond the wall, covered with nails, whereon heads are fastened after
rebellions have been quenched and the time of punishment and warning has
come, we rode into the land of little shops. Here, in another instance,
Marrakesh is unique: the narrow streets were in great part entirely
roofed in overhead either by vines or by bamboos; the brilliant sunlight
streamed through the spaces between the vines and canes, and chequered
the seething white throng which eternally passed underneath it. From an
open street we plunged into the cool shade of one of these arcades. And
how it moved! Nothing ever stood still in the Marrakesh soks. Life
"travels" for ever and for ever there. Between the shops, themselves
teeming with bustle and incident, moved up and down, the throng of white,
draped, dignified figures, calling, heaving, struggling, jostling
sometimes, chattering always, blotched with shifting yellow sunlight and
black shadow cast by the lattice roof overhead. It was a transformation
scene; it was a weird dream--weird to the point of seeming unreal, unlike
men and the haunts of men, though all the time rampant with _humans_.

[Illustration: _Photo by A. Cavilla, Tangier._]

THE KUTOBEA, MARRAKESH.

[_To face p. 328._]

When the Sultan went to Fez, a party of soldiers and goldsmiths and
craftsmen of all sorts went with him from the city of Marrakesh, in
number over forty thousand souls. But the exodus made no appreciable
difference in the soks. Not only the numbers, but the types of the stream
of faces between which we rode were all striking, and each one so far
removed from anything at all European. Humanity can indeed be separated
from humanity by gulfs impassable, or gulfs which may alone be bridged
over by a violation of nature, on the part of the man upon the east
bank or upon the west bank.

The palm-trees wave above Marrakesh, turtle-backed mosques and tall
towers