When the Elevated Court is at Marrakesh the demand for work helps the
Jewish quarter to thrive, but since the Sultan went to Fez the heads of
the Mellah seem to be reluctant to lay out even a few shillings daily to
have the place kept clean. There are no statistics to tell the price that
is paid in human life for this shocking neglect of the elementary
decencies, but it must be a heavy one.

Business premises seem clean enough, though the approach to them could
hardly be less inviting. You enter a big courtyard, and, if wise, remain
on your horse until well clear of the street. The courtyard is wide and
cared for, an enlarged edition of a patio, with big store-rooms on either
side and stabling or a granary. Here also is a bureau, in which the master
sits in receipt of custom, and deals in green tea that has come from India
via England, and white sugar in big loaves, and coffee and other
merchandise. He is buyer and seller at once, now dealing with a native who
wants tea, and now with an Atlas Jew who has an ouadad skin or a rug to
sell; now talking Shilha, the language of the Berbers, now the Moghrebbin
Arabic of the Moors, and again debased Spanish or Hebrew with his own
brethren. He has a watchful eye for all the developments that the day may
bring, and while attending to buyer or seller can take note of all his
servants are doing at the stores, and what is going out or coming in. Your
merchant of the better class has commercial relations with Manchester or
Liverpool; he has visited England and France; perhaps some olive-skinned,
black-eyed boy of his has been sent to an English school to get the wider
views of life and faith, and return to the Mellah to shock his father with
both, and to be shocked in turn by much in the home life that passed
uncriticised before. These things lead to domestic tragedies at times, and
yet neither son nor father is quite to blame.

The best class of Jew in the Mellah has ideas and ideals, but outside the
conduct of his business he lacks initiative. He believes most firmly in
the future of the Jewish race, the ultimate return to Palestine, the
advent of the Messiah. Immersed in these beliefs, he does not see dirt
collecting in the streets and killing little children with the diseases it
engenders. Gradually the grime settles on his faith too, and he loses
sight of everything save commercial ends and the observances that
orthodoxy demands. His, one fears, is a quite hopeless case. The att