'kass is to be met with on every Moorish road that
leads to a big city--a solitary, brave, industrious man, who runs many
risks for little pay. His letters delivered, he goes to the nearest house
of public service, there to sleep, to eat sparingly and smoke incessantly,
until he is summoned to the road again. No matter if the tribes are out on
the warpath, so that the caravans and merchants may not pass,--no matter
if the powder "speaks" from every hill,--the r'kass slips through with
his precious charge, passing lightly as a cloud over a summer meadow,
often within a few yards of angry tribesmen who would shoot him at sight
for the mere pleasure of killing. If the luck is against him he must pay
the heaviest penalty, but this seldom occurs unless the whole country-side
is aflame. At other times, when there is peace in the land, and the wet
season has made the unbridged rivers impassable, whole companies of
travellers camp on either side of some river--a silver thread in the dry
season, a rushing torrent now. But the r'kass knows every ford, and, his
long pole aiding him, manages to reach his destination. It is his business
to defy Nature if necessary, just as he defies man in the pursuit of his
task. He is a living proof of the capacity and dogged endurance still
surviving in a race Europeans affect to despise.

We met slaves-dealers too from time to time, carrying women and children
on mules, while the men slaves walked along at a good pace. And the
dealers by no means wore the villainous aspect that conventional observers
look to see, but were plainly men bent upon business, travelling to make
money. They regarded the slaves as merchandise, to be kept in tolerably
fair condition for the sake of good sales, and unless Ruskin was right
when he said that all who are not actively kind are cruel, there seemed
small ground on which to condemn them. To be sure, they were taking slaves
from market to market, and not bringing Soudanese captives from the
extreme South, so we saw no trace of the trouble that comes of forced
travel in the desert, but even that is equally shared by dealers and slave
alike.

The villages of Morocco are no more than collections of conical huts built
of mud and wattle and palmetto, or goat and camel skins. These huts are
set in a circle all opening to the centre, where the live-stock and
agricultural implements are kept at night. The furniture of a tent is
simple enough. Handloom and handmill, earth