forts me, and thinking of thee makes me glad."

--_Raod el Kartas._

The charm of Marrakesh comes slowly to the traveller, but it stays with
him always, and colours his impressions of such other cities as may
attract his wandering footsteps. So soon as he has left the plains behind
on his way to the coast, the town's defects are relegated to the
background of the picture his memory paints. He forgets the dirty lanes
that serve for roads, the heaps of refuse at every corner, the pariah curs
that howled or snapped at his horse's heels when he rode abroad, the
roughness and discomfort of the accommodation, the poverty and disease
that everywhere went hand in hand around him.

But he remembers and always will remember the city in its picturesque
aspects. How can he forget Moorish hospitality, so lavishly exercised in
patios where the hands of architect and gardener meet--those delightful
gatherings of friends whose surroundings are recalled when he sees, even
in the world of the West--

Groups under the dreaming garden trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening star.

He will never forget the Kutubia tower flanking the mosque of the Library,
with its three glittering balls that are solid gold, if you care to
believe the Moors (and who should know better!), though the European
authorities declare they are but gilded copper. He will hear, across all
intervening sea and lands, the sonorous voices of the three blind mueddins
who call True Believers to prayer from the adjacent minarets. By the side
of the tower, that is a landmark almost from R'hamna's far corner to the
Atlas Mountains, Yusuf ibn Tachfin, who built Marrakesh, enjoys his long,
last sleep in a grave unnoticed and unhonoured by the crowds of men from
strange, far-off lands, who pass it every day. Yet, if the conqueror of
Fez and troubler of Spain could rise from nine centuries of rest, he would
find but little change in the city he set on the red plain in the shadow
of the mountains. The walls of his creation remain: even the broken bridge
over the river dates, men say, from his time, and certainly the faith and
works of the people have not altered greatly. Caravans still fetch and
carry from Fez in the north to Timbuctoo and the banks of the Niger, or
reach the Bab-er-rubb with gold and ivory and slaves from the eastern
oases, that France has almost sealed up. The saints' houses are there
still, though the old have yielded to the new. Storks