ed its part. We
waited now to see the baggage animals before us, and then M'Barak led the
way past the mosque at the side of the Bab el Khamees and through the
brass-covered doors that were brought by the Moors from Spain. Within the
Khamees gate, narrow streets with windowless walls frowning on either side
shut out all view, save that which lay immediately before us.

[Illustration: A MINSTREL]

No untrained eye can follow the winding maze of streets in Marrakesh, and
it is from the Moors we learn that the town, like ancient Gaul of Caesar's
_Commentaries_, has three well defined divisions. The Kasbah is the
official quarter, where the soldiers and governing officials have their
home, and the prison called Hib Misbah receives all evil-doers, and men
whose luck is ill. The Madinah is the general Moorish quarter, and
embraces the Kaisariyah or bazaar district, where the streets are
parallel, well cleaned, thatched with palm and palmetto against the light,
and barred with a chain at either end to keep the animals from entering.
The Mellah (literally "salted place") is the third great division of
Marrakesh, and is the Jewish quarter. In this district, or just beyond it,
are a few streets that seem reserved to the descendants of Mulai Ismail's
black guards, from whom our word "blackguard" should have come to us, but
did not. Within these divisions streets, irregular and without a name,
turn and twist in manner most bewildering, until none save old residents
may hope to know their way about. Pavements are unknown, drainage is in
its most dangerous infancy, the rainy season piles mud in every
direction, and, as though to test the principle embodied in the
homoeopathic theory, the Marrakshis heap rubbish and refuse in every
street, where it decomposes until the enlightened authorities who dwell in
the Kasbah think to give orders for its removal. Then certain men set out
with donkeys and carry the sweepings of the gutters beyond the gates.[18]
This work is taken seriously in the Madinah, but in the Mellah it is
shamefully neglected, and I have ridden through whole streets in the
last-named quarter searching vainly for a place clean enough to permit of
dismounting. Happily, or unhappily, as you will, the inhabitants are
inured from birth to a state of things that must cause the weaklings to
pay heavy toll to Death, the Lord who rules even Sultans.

I had little thought to spare for such matters as we rode into Marrakesh
for th