IN TANGIER]

Mid-day, or a little later, finds Salam in charge of a light meal, and,
that discussed, one may idle in the shade until the sun is well on the way
to the West. Then books and papers are laid aside. We set out for a tramp,
or saddle the horses and ride for an hour or so in the direction of the
mountain, an unexplored Riviera of bewildering and varied loveliness. The
way lies through an avenue of cork trees, past which the great hills slope
seaward, clothed with evergreen oak and heath, and a species of sundew,
with here and there yellow broom, gum cistus, and an unfamiliar plant with
blue flowers. Trees and shrubs fight for light and air, the fittest
survive and thrive, sheltering little birds from the keen-eyed, quivering
hawks above them. The road makes me think of what the French Mediterranean
littoral must have been before it was dotted over with countless vulgar
villas, covered with trees and shrubs that are not indigenous to the soil,
and tortured into trim gardens that might have strayed from a prosperous
suburb of London or Paris. Save a few charcoal burners, or stray women
bent almost double beneath the load of wood they have gathered for some
village on the hills, we see nobody. These evening rides are made into a
country as deserted as the plateau that holds the camp, for the mountain
houses of wealthy residents are half a dozen miles nearer Tangier.[3]

On other evenings the road chosen lies in the direction of the Caves of
Hercules, where the samphire grows neglected, and wild ferns thrive in
unexpected places. I remember once scaring noisy seabirds from what seemed
to be a corpse, and how angrily the gorged, reluctant creatures rose from
what proved to be the body of a stranded porpoise, that tainted the air
for fifty yards around. On another evening a storm broke suddenly.
Somewhere in the centre rose a sand column that seemed to tell, in its
brief moment of existence, the secret of the origin of the djinoon that
roam at will through Eastern legendary lore.

It is always necessary to keep a careful eye upon the sun during these
excursions past the caves. The light fails with the rapidity associated
with all the African countries, tropical and semi-tropical alike. A sudden
sinking, as though the sun had fallen over the edge of the world, a brief
after-glow, a change from gold to violet, and violet to grey, a chill in
the air, and the night has fallen. Then there is a hurried scamper across
san