customed to visitors, rushed out
and almost bit us upon our mules, amidst a hail of stones from Omar and
Said. A valley luxuriating knee-deep in flowers--the Flower Valley we
called it--was the one redeeming feature of that march. There are certain
times for seeing the wild flowers in Morocco--perhaps April in the south
is the best month: so far we had not been as much struck by them as
report would lead one to expect. And yet they were most beautiful.
Picture corn-fields full of love-in-a-mist; orchards of fig-trees, with
the grass ablaze with golden pyrethrums; red mallow standing up in the
barley; the ground carpeted with blue-and-white convolvulus; masses of
carmine-coloured convolvulus densely festooned over the thorn-hedges; on
the barest, stoniest of soil stretches of cistus, pale pink to faded
mauve; asphodels everywhere; sometimes the wild spring form of the
cultivated artichoke, the small variety of the ice-plant, the larkspur,
the lupin, and several varieties of lavender. All these we met with, over
and over again: rarer plants were to be found for the looking. R.
collected specimens of them all, to be classified by the authorities at
Kew Gardens on our return.

The Flower Valley yielded one or two which we had not seen before, and we
would have lingered there, but that time was precious and we had no
notion of our exact whereabouts. It was a case of going on and on and
meeting no one: evening began to draw near, and still we were off the
right track, while our baggage might be anywhere. There was nothing for
it but to push forward and trust to luck: in time we cut into innumerable
little paths, which snaked side by side in the same direction across the
plain, pointing towards the coast, and these we surmised to be the trail
to Mazagan, which proved to be correct. But at that moment, though we
were anything but certain, it had become absolutely necessary to halt for
the night. It was dark, and the mules were done. An Arab village lay on a
hillside not far off, and we made for it.

Omar and Said had with them on their mules our tent and two or three
necessaries for cooking: we had therefore a roof over our heads, and in
time a fire was made, odds and ends were scraped up, and we ate a meal of
sorts sitting on the ground beside a candle stuck on a stone. The night
grew very cold: there was, however, a bit of thin carpet, which we
proposed to wrap ourselves in to sleep. Now and then one of us looked out
between