262

LIGHTERS LOADING 268

AFTER RAIN IN MOGADOR 274

WHERE MANCHESTER GOODS ARE SOLD, MOGADOR 284

OUR CAMP AT AIN-EL-HADGER 290

A BLINDFOLDED CAMEL WORKING A WATER-WHEEL 298

SHIPS OF THE DESERT WE PASS ON THE MARCH 308

TRANSPORTING OUR BAGGAGE 314

MARRAKESH 318

THE OPEN GATE 324

THE KUTOBEA, MARRAKESH 328
_Photo by A. Cavilla, Tangier._

THE WAD-EL-AZELL 334
_Photo by A. Cavilla, Tangier._

THE SULTAN'S GARDEN 344
_Photo by A. Cavilla, Tangier._

THE RIVER TENSIF OUTSIDE MARRAKESH 346
_Photo by A. Cavilla, Tangier._

ONE OF OUR LAST CAMPS. LOADING THE CAMEL 350

CHAPTER I

TANGIER--COUNTRY PEOPLE--THE PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA--MOORISH PRISONS--WE
RIDE TO CAPE SPARTEL--DECIDE TO LEAVE TANGIER AND PUSH INLAND.

CHAPTER I

The vague and hazy ideals which the white light of an English
upbringing relegates to dreamland and dismisses as idle fancies,
rise up in the glare of African sunlight, alive, tangible,
unashamed; the things that are, not the things that might
be:--the vivid colouring, the hot crowding, the stately men and
veiled women, the despotism and stoicism, the unchanging
picturesqueness of the Thousand and One Nights, the dramatic
inevitability of the Old Testament.--A. J. D.

THERE was no desert in Morocco.

If a country has not been "read up" beforehand, the imagination has free
play and forms many false conclusions: yet though it suffer on the one
hand rude awakenings, it is on the other compensated by certain new
lights--indelible and unique impressions--which come only in the train of
things _inconnu_. So though we found no desert, there are other things in
Morocco.

It is one of the few countries in the world, and they grow fewer each
year, which is still unexplored--unknown. Thousands of square miles in
Morocco have never been crossed by a European, or at any rate none have
returned to tell the tale: maps mark only blank spaces, and have no names
for villages, no records of mountains or rivers: there are no roads,
still less railways, in the country: the only means of transport along
the wild, worn tracks is by camels, mules, and donkeys: he who will not
ride perforce walks.