pen space outside the Gate of the Thursday
Market, just beyond the city walls, within view of the plains and a
distant low range of mountains. Thousands and thousands of tall palms,
groves of them, wave in the wind all over the surrounding country: a few
great watercourses, worn and eaten out of the red soil, burrow between
the forests on their way down to the great river.

To reach the market we rode out along a road thronged with people selling
all sorts of goods, from splendid old flintlock guns from the Sus chased
with silver and gold and going at three pounds, to striped carpets strong
and violent in colouring at seven-and-sixpence each, and second-hand
clothes of the most varied description. At last, topping a little hill,
we rode down into the market: it is, more correctly speaking, a horse
fair,--mules were also for sale. The horses down in the south are without
doubt very different from the poor little ponies bred up in the north;
but even these, in comparison, for instance, with a thoroughbred hunter
at home, fell far short of what my defective imagination had led me to
expect of Arab stallions in Morocco. For the most part there was nothing
for sale except great heavy brutes with small heads and proud arched
necks. Every one of them fell away in the hindquarters.

As usual the sale was prefaced by a prayer: hard bargaining, sharp
practice, and much or little swindling, inseparable from horse-dealing,
must all of it, first of all, be watered by prayer. Therefore the
horsemen formed into a line; the central figure chanted some verses from
the Kor[=a]n; the rest held out their hands palms upwards, then joined in
a sort of Amen, the instant afterwards sticking their spurs into their
horses and dashing forward, charging in a line over the plain between two
rows of spectators, and pulling the horses up on to their haunches at the
end, red with spur-marks and white with foam. This was repeated two or
three times, the short space in which the riders pulled up out of a full
gallop being sometimes almost incredible; then a great circle was formed
of would-be purchasers and onlookers, and the horses were ridden into the
circle and then round and round to display themselves, each rider at the
same time _auctioning his own horse_, yelling out the bids for it, as
they rose, at the top of his voice. When the last bid was made, and he
could get no more, the rider, after shouting the price, added that he
"would not consult th