d with outspread hands
denounces Mediunah and all its ways. The men of the village are cowards;
the women have no shame. Their parents were outcasts. They have no fear of
the Prophet who bade True Believers deal fairly with the stranger within
their gates. In a year at most, perhaps sooner, "Our Master the Sultan"
will assuredly be among these people who shame Al Moghreb,[2] he will eat
them up, dogs will make merry among their graves, and their souls will go
down to the pit. In short, everything is too dear.

Only the little children are frightened by this outburst, which is no more
than a prelude to bargaining. The women extol and Salam decries the goods
on offer; both praise Allah. Salam assures them that the country of the
"Ingliz" would be ruined if its inhabitants had to pay the prices they ask
for such goods as they have to sell. He will see his master starve by
inches, he will urge him to return to Tangier and eat there at a fair
price, before he will agree to sacrifices hitherto unheard of in Sunset
Land. This bargaining proceeds for a quarter of an hour without
intermission, and by then the natives have brought their prices down and
Salam has brought his up. Finally the money is paid in Spanish pesetas or
Moorish quarters, and carefully examined by the simple folk, who retire to
their ancestral hills, once more praising Allah who sends custom. Salam,
his task accomplished, complains that the villagers have robbed us
shamefully, but a faint twinkle in his eye suggests that he means less
than he says.

Breakfast over, I seek a hillside cave where there is a double gift of
shade and a wonderful view, content to watch the pageantry of the morning
hours and dream of hard work. Only the goatherds and their charges suggest
that the district is inhabited, unless some vessel passing on its way to
or from the southern coast can be seen communicating with the signal
station round the bend of the rocks. There a kindly old Scot lives, with
his Spanish wife and little children, in comparative isolation, from the
beginning to the end of the year.

"I've almost forgotten my own tongue," he said to me one evening when he
came down to the camp to smoke the pipe of peace and tell of the fur and
feather that pass in winter time. It was on a day when a great flight of
wild geese had been seen winging its way to the unknown South, and the
procession had fired the sporting instinct in one of us at least.

[Illustration: A STREET