ur dollars in Moorish silver, a
sum less than nine English pounds.

And I seem to see, even now as I write, the Spanish woman with cruel
painted face, sitting at the open casement of an old house near the
Spanish church, thrumming her guitar, and beneath her, by the roadside, a
beggar clad, like the patriarch of old, in a garment of many colours, that
made his black face seem blacker than any I have seen in Africa. Then Dar
el Baida sinks behind the water-port gate, the strong Moorish rowers bend
to their oars, their boat laps through the dark-blue water, and we are
back aboard the ship again, in another atmosphere, another world.
Passengers are talking as it might be they had just returned from their
first visit to a Zoological Garden. Most of them have seen no more than
the dirt and ugliness--their vision noted no other aspect--of the
old-world port. The life that has not altered for centuries, the things
that make it worth living to all the folk we leave behind,--these are
matters in which casual visitors to Morocco have no concern. They resent
suggestion that the affairs of "niggers" can call for serious
consideration, far less for appreciation or interest of any sort.

Happily Djedida is not far away. At daybreak we are securely anchored
before the town whose possession by the Portuguese is recorded to this
hour by the fine fortifications and walls round the port. We slip over the
smooth water in haste, that we may land before the sun is too high in the
heavens. It is not without a thrill of pleasure that I hear the ship's
shrill summons and see the rest of the passengers returning.

[Illustration: PILGRIMS ON A STEAMER]

By this time it is afternoon, but the intervening hours have not been
wasted. I have found the Maalem, master of a bakehouse, a short,
olive-skinned, wild, and wiry little man, whose yellowed eyes and
contracting pupils tell a tale of haschisch and kief that his twitching
fingers confirm. But he knows the great track stretching some hundred and
twenty miles into the interior up to Red Marrakesh; he is "the father
and mother" of mules and horses, animals that brighten the face of man by
reason of their superlative qualities, and he is prepared to undertake the
charge of all matters pertaining to a journey over this roadless country.
His beasts are fit to journey to Tindouf in the country of the Draa, so
fine is their condition; their saddles and accoutrements would delight the
Sultan's own minis