I saw many women and girls bent under the weight of baskets of charcoal, or firewood, or loads of hay, and some late arrivals coming in heavily burdened in this fashion were accompanied by their husband, who rode at ease on a donkey and abused them roundly because they did not go quickly enough. Mules and donkeys, with fore and hind leg hobbled, were left in one corner of the market-place, to make up in rest what they lacked in food. Needless to say that the marketing was very brisk, but I noted with some interest that very little money changed hands. Barter was more common than sale, partly because the Government had degraded its own currency until the natives were fighting shy of it, and partly because the owners of the sheep and goats were a company of true Bedouins from the extreme South. These Bedouins were the most interesting visitors to the Tuesday market, and I was delighted when one of them recognised Salam as a friend. The two had met in the days when an adventurous Scot set up in business at Cape Juby in the extreme South, where I believe his Majesty Lebaudy the First is now king.

The Saharowi was an exceedingly thin man, of wild aspect, with flowing hair and scanty beard. His skin was burnt deep brown, and he was dressed in a blue cotton garment of guinea cloth made in simplest fashion. He was the chief of a little party that had been travelling for two months with faces set toward the North. He reminded Salam of Sidi[51] Mackenzie, the Scot who ruled Cape Juby, and how the great manager, whose name was known from the fort to Tindouf, had nearly poisoned him by giving him bread to eat when he was faint with hunger. These true Bedouins live on milk and cheese, with an occasional piece of camel or goat flesh, and a rare taste of mutton. When Salam's friend came starving to Cape Juby, Sidi Mackenzie had given him bread. The hungry man ate some and at once became violently ill, his stomach could not endure such solid fare. Having no milk in the fort, they managed to keep him alive on rice-water. It would appear that the Saharowi can easily live on milk for a week, and with milk and cheese can thrive indefinitely, as indeed could most other folk, if they cared to forswear luxury and try.



The little party was travelling with some hundreds of sheep and goats, which were being tended a little way off by the children, and, large though their flocks seemed, they were in truth sadly reduced by the drought that had driven one and all to the North. The Saharowi explained to Salam that all the wandering Arabs were trekking northwards in search of land that had seen the rain; and that their path was strewn with the skeletons of animals fallen by the way. These nomads carried their wives and little ones, together with tents and household impedimenta, on the camels, and walked on foot with the grown children in charge of the flocks. The sheep they had sold to the butcher were in fair condition, and fetched from four to five shillings in English money, or the equivalent of this sum in goods, for when a Saharowi approaches civilised lands he is generally in need of some of the products of civilisation, or thinks he is, though, at need, he manages excellently well without them.

Among the miscellaneous gathering that the Tuesday market had attracted to Hanchen I noticed a small company of acrobats from the Sus, and a medicine man of fierce aspect, who sat by himself under a rough tent, muttering charms and incantations, and waiting for Allah to send victims. This wonder-worker had piercing eyes, that seemed to examine the back of your head, long matted hair and a beard to match. He wore a white djellaba and a pair of new slippers, and was probably more dangerous than any disease he aided and abetted.

For the amusement of the people who did not care for acrobatic feats and stood in no need of the primitive methods of the physician, there was a story-teller, who addressed a somewhat attenuated circle of phlegmatic listeners, and a snake-charmer who was surrounded by children. Sidi ben Aissa undoubtedly kept the snakes—spotted leffas from the Sus—from hurting his follower, but not even the saint could draw floos from poor youngsters whose total wealth would probably have failed to yield threepence to the strictest investigator. Happily for them the charmer was an artist in his way; he loved his work for its own sake, and abated no part of his performance, although the reward would hardly buy him and his assistant a meal of mutton and bread at their labour's end. The boys of Hanchen were doing brisk business in the brass cases of cartridges that had been fired on the previous day, and without a doubt the story of the wonders of a repeating gun lost nothing in the telling.



There was no interval for rest when the hours of greatest heat came round. Late arrivals who travelled in on mule- or donkey-back renewed business when it slackened, and brought fresh goods to be sold or exchanged. The "Sons of Lions" had broken up the market at Sidi el Muktar on the previous Friday before it was properly concluded, and many natives, disappointed there, had come out to Hanchen to do their business, until there seemed to be nothing in any stall that lacked buyers. Even the old man who had a heap of scrap-iron when the market opened had sold every piece of it by four o'clock, though it would have puzzled a European to find any use for such rubbish. The itinerant mender of slippers was hard at work with three young lads, and I never saw any one of the party idle. Hawks and corbies fluttered over the butcher's ground, and I noticed a vulture in the deep vault of the sky. Pariah dogs would clear every bit of refuse from the ground before another day dawned, and in their nasty fashion would serve their country, for the weather was very hot and the odours were overpowering. Flies covered all unprotected meat until it ceased to look red, and the stall of the seller of sweetmeats was a study in black and white: black when the swarms settled, and white for a brief moment when he switched them off with his feathery bamboo brush. Yet, in spite of the many difficulties under which trade was carried on, one could not help feeling that buyers and sellers alike were enjoying themselves hugely. The market did more than help them to make a living. It was at once their club, their newspaper, and their theatre, and supplied the one recreation of lives that—perhaps only to European seeming—were tedious as a twice-told tale.

Here the village folk were able to keep themselves posted in the country's contemporary history, for traders had come from all points of the compass, and had met men at other markets who, in their turn, brought news from places still more remote. Consequently you might learn in Hanchen's Tuesday market what the Sultan was doing in Fez, and how the Rogui was occupied in Er-Riff. French penetration in the far-off districts of no man's land beyond Tafilalt was well-known to these travelling market-folk; the Saharowi had spoken with the heads of a caravan that had come with slaves from Ghadames, by way of the Tuat, bound for Marrakesh. Resting by day and travelling by night, they had passed without challenge through the French lines. A visitor knowing Arabic and Shilha, and able to discount the stories properly, might have had a faithful picture of Morocco as its own people see it, had he been admitted to join the weather-worn, hardy traders who sat complacently eyeing their diminished store towards the close of day. Truth is nowhere highly esteemed in Morocco,[52] and the colouring superimposed upon most stories must have destroyed their original hue, but it served to please the Moors and Berbers who, like the men of other countries one knows, have small use for unadorned facts. Perhaps the troubles that were reported from every side of the doomed country accounted for the professional story-teller's thin audience. By the side of tales that had some connection with fact the salt of his legends lost its savour.



Towards evening the crowd melted away silently, as it had come. A few mules passed along the road to Mogador, the Bedouin and his company moved off in the direction of Saffi, and the greater part of the traders turned south-east to M'touga, where there was a Thursday market that could be reached in comfort. Hanchen retired within its boundaries, rich in the proceeds of the sale of fodder, which had been in great demand throughout the day. Small companies of boys roamed over the market-place, seeking to snap up any trifles that had been left behind, just as English boys will at the Crystal Palace or Alexandra Park, after a firework display. The Moorish youngsters had even less luck than their English brethren, for in Morocco, where life is simple and men need and have little, everything has its use, and a native throws nothing away. The dogs, eager to forestall the vultures, were still fighting among themselves for the offal left by the butcher, when the villagers, who had come to take a late cup of tea with Salam and M'Barak, resumed their slippers, testified to the Unity of Allah, and turned to ascend Hanchen's steep hill.

Among the stories circulated in the Tuesday market was one to the effect that a lion had come down from the Atlas, and after taking toll of the cattle belonging to the douars on its road, had been shot at the western end of the forest. This tale was told with so much circumstance that it seemed worth inquiry, and I found in Mogador that a great beast had indeed come from the hills and wrought considerable harm; but it was a leopard, not a lion. It may be doubted whether lions are to be found anywhere north of the Atlas to-day, though they were common enough in times past, and one is said to have been shot close to Tangier in the middle of last century. If they still exist it is in the farthest Atlas range, in the country of the Beni M'gild, a district that cannot be approached from the west at all, and in far lands beyond, that have been placed under observation lately by the advance-columns of the French Algerian army, which does not suffer from scruples where its neighbour's landmarks are concerned. Most of the old writers gave the title of lion or tiger to leopards, panthers, and lemurs; indeed, the error flourishes to-day.



On the road once again, I found myself wondering at the way in which British sportsmen have neglected the Argan Forest. If they had to reach it as we did, after long days and nights in a country that affords little attraction for sportsmen, it would be no matter for wonder that they stay away. But the outskirts of the forest can be reached from Mogador at the expense of a five-mile ride across the miniature Sahara that cuts off Sidi M'godol's city from the fertile lands, and Mogador has a weekly service of steamers coming direct from London by way of the other Moorish ports. No part of the forest is preserved, gun licenses are unknown, and the woods teem with game. Stories about the ouadad or moufflon may be disregarded, for this animal is only found in the passes of the Atlas Mountains, miles beyond the forest's boundaries. But, on the other hand, the wild boar is plentiful, while lynx, porcupine, hyaena, jackal, and hare are by no means rare. Sand-grouse and partridge thrive in large quantities. There are parts of the forest that recall the Highlands of Scotland, though the vegetation is richer than any that Scotland can show, and in these places, unknown save to a very few, the streams are full of trout, and the otter may be hunted along the banks. The small quantity and poor quality of native guns may be held to account for the continual presence of birds and beasts in a part of the world that may not fairly be deemed remote, and where, save in times of stress, a sportsman who will treat the natives with courtesy and consideration may be sure of a hearty welcome and all the assistance he deserves. Withal, no man who has once enjoyed a few days in the Argan Forest can sincerely regret Europe's neglect of it: human nature is not unselfish enough for that.

The ride through the last part of the forest was uneventful. Argan, kharob, and lotus, with the help of a few of the "arar" or gum sandarac trees, shut off the view to the right and left. Below them dwarf-palm, aloe, cactus, and sweet broom made a dense undergrowth, and where the woodland opened suddenly the ground was aflame with flowers that recalled England as clearly as the cuckoo's note. Pimpernel, convolvulus, mignonette, marigold, and pansy were English enough, and in addition to these the ox-daisies of our meadows were almost as common here. Many companies of the true Bedouins passed us on the road, heralded by great flocks of sheep and goats, the sheep pausing to eat the tops of the dwarf-palms, the goats to climb the low-lying argan trees, while their owners stayed to ask about the water supply and the state of the country beyond.

Though we might consider ourselves far removed from civilisation, these Bedouins felt that they were all too near it. The change from their desert land, with its few and far-scattered oases, to this country where there was a douar at the end of every day's journey, was like a change from the country to the town. They could not view without concern a part of the world in which men wore several garments, ate bread and vegetables, and slept under cover in a walled village, and one wild fellow, who carried a very old flint-lock musket, lamented the drought that had forced them from their homes to a place so full of men. So far as I was able to observe the matter, the Berber muleteers of El Arbi bel Hadj ben Haidah looked with great scorn upon these Bedouins, and their contempt was reciprocated. In the eyes of the Berbers these men were outcasts and "eaters of sand," and in the eyes of the Bedouins the muleteers were puling, town-bred slaves, who dared not say their right hands were their own.

Perhaps the difficulty in the way of a proper understanding was largely physical. The Berbers believe they came to Morocco from Canaan, forced out of Palestine by the movement of the Jews under Joshua. They settled in the mountains of the "Far West," and have never been absorbed or driven out by their Arab conquerors. Strong, sturdy, temperate men, devoid of imagination, and of the impulse to create or develop an artistic side to their lives, they can have nothing in common with the slenderly built, far-seeing Arab of the plains, who dreams dreams and sees visions all the days of his life. Between Salam and the Bedouins, on the other hand, good feeling came naturally. The poor travellers, whose worldly wealth was ever in their sight—a camel or two, a tent with scanty furniture, and a few goats and sheep—had all the unexplored places of the world to wander in, and all the heavens for their canopy. That is the life the Arabs love, and it had tempted Salam many hundreds of miles from his native place, the sacred city of Sheshawan, on the border of Er-Riff. The wandering instinct is never very far from any of us who have once passed east of Suez, and learned that the highest end and aim of life is not to live in a town, however large and ugly, and suffer without complaining the inevitable visits of the tax collector.

Our tent was set for the night in a valley that we reached by a path half-buried in undergrowth and known only to the head muleteer. It was a spot far removed from the beaten tracks of the travellers. In times past a great southern kaid had set his summer-house there: its skeleton, changed from grey to pink in the rosy light of sun-setting, stood before us, just across a tiny stream fringed by rushes, willows, and oleanders. When the Court Elevated by Allah left Marrakesh for the north some years ago, the sorely-tried natives had risen against their master, they had captured and plundered his house, and he had been fortunate in getting away with a whole skin. Thereafter the tribesmen had fought among themselves for the spoils of war, the division of the china and cutlery accounting for several deaths. All the land round our little camp had been a garden, a place famous for roses and jessamine, verbena and the geraniums that grow in bushes, together with countless other flowers, that make the garden of Sunset Land suggest to Moors the beauties of the paradise that is to come. Now the flowers that had been so carefully tended ran wild, the boar rooted among them, and the porcupine made a home in their shade. As evening closed in, the wreck of the great house became vague and shadowy, a thing without outline, the wraith of the home that had been. Grey owls and spectral bats sailed or fluttered from the walls. They might have been past owners or servitors who had suffered metamorphosis. The sight set me thinking of the mutual suspicions of the Bedouins and the Susi traders, the raiding of Sidi el Muktar, the other signs of tribal fighting that had been apparent on the road, the persecution of the Moor by his protected fellow-subjects,—in short, the whole failure of the administration to which the ruin that stood before me seemed to give fitting expression. This house had not stood, and, after all, I thought Morocco was but a house divided against itself.



In the face of all the difficulties and dangers that beset the state, the Sultan's subjects are concerned only with their own private animosities. Berber cannot unite with Moor, village still wars against village, each province is as a separate kingdom, so far as the adjacent province is concerned. As of old, the kaids are concerned only with filling their pockets; the villagers, when not fighting, are equally engrossed in saving some small portion of their earnings and taking advantage of the inability of the central Government to collect taxes. They all know that the land is in confusion, that the Europeans at the Court are intriguing against its independence. In camp and market-place men spread the news of the French advance from the East. Yet if the forces of the country could be organised,—if every official would but respond to the needs of the Government and the people unite under their masters,—Morocco might still hold Europe at bay, to the extent at least of making its subjection too costly and difficult a task for any European Government to undertake. If Morocco could but find its Abd el Kadr, the day of its partition might even yet be postponed indefinitely. But next year, or the next—who shall say?

My journey was well nigh over. I had leisure now to recall all seen and heard in the past few weeks and contrast it with the mental notes I had made on the occasion of previous visits. And the truth was forced upon me that Morocco was nearer the brink of dissolution than it had ever been—that instability was the dominant note of social and political life. I recalled my glimpses of the Arabs who live in Algeria and Tunisia, and even Egypt under European rule, and thought of the servility and dependence of the lower classes and the gross, unintelligent lives of the rest. Morocco alone had held out against Europe, aided, to be sure, by the accident of her position at the corner of the Mediterranean where no one European Power could permit another to secure permanent foothold. And with the change, all the picturesque quality of life would go from the Moghreb, and the kingdom founded by Mulai Idrees a thousand years ago would become as vulgar as Algeria itself.

There is something very solemn about the passing of a great kingdom—and Morocco has been renowned throughout Europe. It has preserved for us the essence of the life recorded in the Pentateuch; it has lived in the light of its own faith and enforced respect for its prejudices upon one and all. In days when men overrun every square mile of territory in the sacred name of progress, and the company promoter in London, Paris, or Berlin acquires wealth he cannot estimate by juggling with mineralised land he has never seen, Morocco has remained intact, and though her soil teems with evidences of mineral wealth, no man dares disturb it. There is something very fascinating about this defiance of all that the great Powers of the world hold most dear.

One could not help remembering, too, the charm and courtesy, the simple faith and chivalrous life, of the many who would be swallowed up in the relentless maw of European progress, deliberately degraded, turned literally or morally into hewers of wood and drawers of water—misunderstood, made miserable and discontented. And to serve what end? Only that the political and financial ambitions of a restless generation might be gratified—that none might be able to say, "A weak race has been allowed to follow its path in peace."

Salam disturbed my meditations.

"Everything shut up, sir," he said. "I think you have forgot: to-morrow we go early to hunt the wild boar, sir."

So I left Morocco to look after its own business and turned in.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] Sidi is a Moorish title, and means "my Lord."

[52] It is related of one Sultan that when a "Bashador" remonstrated with him for not fulfilling a contract, he replied, "Am I then a Nazarene, that I should be bound by my word?"



TO THE GATE OF THE PICTURE CITY



CHAPTER XII

TO THE GATE OF THE PICTURE CITY

Is it Pan's breath, fierce in the tremulous maiden-hair, That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air, In the stress of the sun?

A Nympholept.

By the time the little camp was astir and the charcoal fires had done their duty to eggs, coffee, and porridge, Pepe Ratto, accompanied by two of his Berber trackers, rode into the valley, and dismounted on the level ground where our tent was pitched. At first sight the sportsman stood revealed in our welcome visitor. The man whose name will be handed down to future generations in the annals of Morocco's sport would attract attention anywhere. Tall, straight, sunburnt, grizzled, with keen grey eyes and an alert expression, suggesting the easy and instantaneous change from thought to action, Pepe Ratto is in every inch of him a sportsman. Knowing South Morocco as few Europeans know it, and having an acquaintance with the forest that is scarcely exceeded by either Moor or Berber, he gives as much of his life as he can spare to the pursuit of the boar, and he had ridden out with his hunters this morning from his forest home, the Palm Tree House, to meet us before we left the Argans behind, so that we might turn awhile on the track of a "solitaire" tusker.

So the mules were left to enjoy an unexpected rest while their owners enjoyed an uninterrupted breakfast, and the kaid was given ample time in which to groom his horse and prepare it and himself for sufficiently imposing entrance into the Picture City[53] that evening. Salam was instructed to pack tents and boxes at his leisure, before he took one of my sporting guns and went to pursue fur and feather in parts of the forest immediately adjacent to the camp. A straight shot and a keen sportsman, I knew that Salam would not bother about the hares that might cross his path, or birds that rose in sudden flight away from it. His is the Moorish method of shooting, and he is wont to stalk his quarry and fire before it rises. I protested once that this procedure was unsportsmanlike.

"Yes, sir," he replied simply. "If I wait for bird to fly may be I miss him, an' waste cartridge."



This argument was, of course, unanswerable. He would follow birds slowly and deliberately, taking advantage of wind and cover, patient in pursuit and deadly in aim. Our points of view were different. I shot for sport, and he, and all Moors, for the bag. In this I felt he was my superior. But, barring storks, all creatures were game that came within Salam's range.

No Moor will harm a stork. Even Moorish children, whose taste for destruction and slaughter is as highly developed as any European's, will pick up a young stork that has fallen from its nest and return it to the mother bird if they can. Storks sit at peace among the women of the hareem who come for their afternoon airing to the flat roof-tops of Moorish houses. Moorish lovers in the streets below tell the story of their hopes and fears to the favoured bird, who, when he is chattering with his mandibles, is doing what he can to convey the message. Every True Believer knows that the stork was once a Sultan, or a Grand Wazeer at least, who, being vain and irreligious, laughed in the beards of the old men of his city on a sacred day when they came to pay their respects to him. By so doing he roused the wrath of Allah, who changed him suddenly to his present form. But in spite of misdeeds, the Moors love the stately bird, and there are hospitals for storks in Fez and Marrakesh, where men whose sanctity surpasses their ignorance are paid to minister to the wants of the sick or injured among them. Many a time Salam, in pursuit of birds, has passed within a few-yards of the father of the red legs or his children, but it has never occurred to him to do them harm. Strange fact, but undeniable, that in great cities of the East, where Muslims and Christians dwell, the storks will go to the quarter occupied by True Believers, and leave the other districts severely alone. I have been assured by Moors that the first of these birds having been a Muslim, the storks recognise the True Faith, and wish to testify to their preference for it. It is hard to persuade a Moor to catch a stork or take an egg from the nest, though in pursuit of other birds and beasts he is a stranger to compunction in any form.

One of the trackers gave me his horse, and Pepe Ratto led the way down the stream for a short distance and then into thick scrub that seemed to be part of wild life's natural sanctuary, so quiet it lay, so dense and undisturbed. After the first five minutes I was conscious of the forest in an aspect hitherto unknown to me; I was aware that only a man who knew the place intimately could venture to make a path through untrodden growths that were left in peace from year to year. It was no haphazard way, though bushes required careful watching, the double-thorned lotus being too common for comfort.



My companion's eye, trained to the observation of the woodlands in every aspect, noted the stories told by the bushes, the gravel, and the sand with a rapidity that was amazing. Twenty-five years of tireless hunting have given Pepe Ratto an instinct that seems to supplement the ordinary human gifts of sight and hearing. Our forefathers, who hunted for their living, must have had this gift so developed, and while lying dormant in Europeans, whose range of sports is compassed by the life of cities and limited game preserves, it persists among the men who devote the best years of their life to pitting their intelligence against that of the brute creation. The odds are of course very much in favour of the human being, but we may not realise readily the extreme cunning of hunted animals. The keen sportsman, who rode by my side pointing out the track of boar or porcupine, showing where animals had been feeding, and judging how recently they had passed by difference in the marks too faint for my eyes to see, confessed that he had spent months on the track of a single animal, baffled over and over again, but getting back to his quarry because he had with him the mark of the feet as copied when he tracked it for the first time.

"No boar has four feet absolutely identical with those of another boar," he said, "so when once you have the prints the animal must leave the forest altogether and get off to the Atlas, or you will find him in the end. He may double repeatedly on his own tracks, he may join a herd and travel with them for days into the thick scrub, where the dogs are badly torn in following him, but he can never get away, and the hunter following his tracks learns to realise in the frenzied changes and manoeuvres of the beast pursued, its consciousness of his pursuit." In these matters the trained and confirmed hunter's heart grows cold as the physiologist's, while his senses wax more and more acute, and near to the level of those of his prey.

That is but a small part of the hunter's lore. As his eyes and ears develop a power beyond the reach of dwellers of cities with stunted sight and spoiled hearing, he grows conscious of the great forest laws that rule the life of birds and beasts—laws yet unwritten in any language. He finds all living things pursuing their destiny by the light of customs that appeal as strongly to them as ours to us, and learns to know that the order and dignity of the lower forms of life are not less remarkable in their way than the phenomena associated with our own.

To me, the whirring of a covey of sand-grouse or partridges could express little more than the swift passage of birds to a place of security. To the man who grew almost as a part of the forest, the movement was something well defined, clearly initiated, and the first step in a sequence that he could trace without hesitation. One part of the forest might be the same as another to the casual rider, or might at best vary in its purely picturesque quality. To the long trained eye, on the other hand, it was a place that would or would not be the haunt of certain beasts or birds at certain hours of the day, by reason of its aspect with regard to the sun, its soil, cover, proximity to the river or other source of water supply, its freedom from certain winds and accessibility to others, its distance from any of the tracks that led to the country beyond the forest and were frequented at certain seasons of the year. The trained hunter reads all this as in a book, but the most of us can do no more than recognise the writing when it has been pointed out to us.



So it happened that my morning ride with the hardy hunter, whose achievements bulk next to those of the late Sir John Drummond Hay in the history of Moorish sport, had an interest that did not depend altogether upon the wild forest paths through which he led the way. He told me how at daybreak the pack of cross-bred hounds came from garden, copse, and woodland, racing to the steps of the Palm Tree House, and giving tongue lustily, as though they knew there was sport afoot. One or two grizzled huntsmen who had followed every track in the Argan Forest were waiting in the patio for his final instructions, and he told them of hoof prints that had revealed to his practised eye a "solitaire" boar of more than ordinary size. He had tracked it for more than three hours on the previous day, past the valley where our tents were set, and knew now where the lair was chosen.

"He has been lying under an argan tree, one standing well away from the rest at a point where the stream turns sharply, about a mile from the old kasbah in the wood, and he has moved now to make a new lair. I have made a note of his feet in my book; he had been wallowing less than twenty-four hours before when I found him. To-morrow, when we hunt the beast I hope to track to-day, the pack will follow in charge of the huntsmen. They will be taken through the wood all the way, for it is necessary to avoid villages and cattle pasture when you have more than a score of savage dogs that have not been fed since three o'clock on the previous afternoon. They are by no means averse from helping themselves to a sheep or a goat at such times."

We had ridden in single file through a part where the lotus, now a tree instead of a bush, snatched at us on either side, and the air was fragrant with broom, syringa, and lavender. Behind us the path closed and was hidden; before us it was too thick to see more than a few yards ahead. Here and there some bird would scold and slip away, with a flutter of feathers and a quiver of the leaves through which it fled; while ever present, though never in sight, the cuckoo followed us the whole day long. Suddenly and abruptly the path ended by the side of a stream where great oleanders spread their scarlet blossoms to the light, and kingfishers darted across the pools that had held tiny fish in waters left by the rainy season. When we pushed our horses to the brink the bushes on either hand showered down their blossoms as though to greet the first visitors to the rivulet's bank. Involuntarily we drew rein by the water's edge, acknowledging the splendour of the scene with a tribute of silence. If you have been in the Western Highlands of Scotland, and along the Levantine Riviera, and can imagine a combination of the most fascinating aspects of both districts, you have but to add to them the charm of silence and complete seclusion, the sense of virgin soil, and the joy of a perfect day in early summer, and then some faint picture of the scene may present itself. It remains with me always, and the mere mention of the Argan Forest brings it back.

Pepe Ratto soon recovered himself.



"Yes," he said, in reply to my unspoken thoughts, "one seldom sees country like this anywhere else. But the boar went this way."

So saying, the hunter uppermost again, he wheeled round, and we followed the stream quite slowly while he looked on either hand for signs of the large tusker. "We must find where he has settled," he continued. "Now the weather is getting so warm he will move to some place that is sandy and moist, within reach of the puddles he has chosen to wallow in. And he won't go far from this part, because the maize is not yet ripe."

"Do they grow maize in this province?" I asked.

"Yes," replied the hunter. "I give the farmers the seed and they plant it, for a boar is as fond of green maize as a fox is of chickens." He paused and showed me the marks of a herd that had come to the water within the past two days to drink and wallow. While I could see the marks of many feet, he could tell me all about the herd, the approximate numbers, the ages, and the direction they were taking. Several times we dismounted, and he examined the banks very carefully until, at the fourth or fifth attempt, tracks that were certainly larger than any we had seen revealed the long-sought tusker.

We went through the wood, the hunter bending over a trail lying too faint on the green carpet of the forest for me to follow. We moved over difficult ground, often under the blaze of the African sun, and, intent upon the pursuit, noted neither the heat nor the flight of time. For some two miles of the dense scrub, the boar had gone steadily enough until the ground opened into a clearing, where the soil was sandy and vegetation correspondingly light. Here at last the track moved in a circle.

"See," said the hunter, a suspicion of enthusiasm in his tone, "he has been circling; that means he is looking for a lair. Stay here, if you will, with the horses while I follow him home." And in a minute he was out of sight.

I waited patiently enough for what seemed a long time, trying to catch the undersong that thrilled through the forest, "the horns of elf-land faintly blowing," the hum such as bees at home make when late May sees the chestnut trees in flower. Here the song was a veritable psalm of life, in which every tree, bird, bush, and insect had its own part to play. It might have been a primeval forest; even the horses were grazing quietly, as though their spirits had succumbed to the solemn influences around us. The great god Pan himself could not have been far away, and I felt that he might have shown himself—that it was fitting indeed for him to appear in such a place and at such a season.

The hunter came back silently as he had gone.



"All's well," he said as he remounted; "he is a fine fellow, and has his lair most comfortably placed. And you should have come with me, but your creaking English gaiters would have disturbed him, while my soft native ones let me go within thirty or forty yards of his new home in safety." My companion was wearing the Moorish gaiters of the sort his trackers used—things made of palmetto. When they follow on foot the trackers wear leather aprons too, in order to deaden the sound made by their passage through the resisting undergrowth.

Then we rode back by another route, down paths that only an Arab horse could have hoped to negotiate, through densely wooded forest tracks that shut out the sun, but allowed its brightness to filter through a leafy sieve and work a pattern of dappled light and shadow on the grass, for our delectation. Most of the way had been made familiar in pursuit of some wild boar that would not stand and fight but hurried into the wildest and most difficult part of the forest, charging through every bush, however thick and thorny, in vain endeavour to shake off the pitiless pack. For my companion no corner of the forest lacked memories, some recent, some remote, but all concerned with the familiar trial of skill in which the boar had at last yielded up his pleasant life.

We came quite suddenly upon the stream and past a riot of green bamboo and rushes, saw the kaid's house, more than ever gaunt and dishevelled by daylight, with the shining water in front, the wild garden beyond, and on the other bank the Susi muleteers sitting with the black slave in pleasant contemplation of the work Salam had done. Kaid M'Barak dozed on one of the boxes, nursing his beloved gun, while the horse equally dear to him stood quietly by, enjoying the lush grasses. Salam and the tracker were not far away, a rendezvous was appointed for the hunt, and Pepe Ratto, followed by his men, cantered off, leaving me to a delightful spell of rest, while Salam persuaded the muleteers to load the animals for the last few miles of the road between us and Mogador.

Then, not without regret, I followed the pack-mules out of the valley, along the track leading to a broad path that has been worn by the feet of countless nomads, travelling with their flocks and herds, from the heat and drought of the extreme south to the markets that receive the trade of the country, or making haste from the turbulent north to escape the heavy hand of the oppressor.

It was not pleasant to ride away from the forest, to see the great open spaces increasing and the trees yielding slowly but surely to the dwarf bushes that are the most significant feature of the southern country, outside the woodland and oases. I thought of the seaport town we were so soon to see—a place where the civilisation we had dispensed with happily enough for some weeks past would be forced into evidence once more, where the wild countrymen among whom we had lived at our ease would be seen only on market days, and the native Moors would have assimilated just enough of the European life and thought to make them uninteresting, somewhat vicious, and wholly ill-content.

The forest was left behind, the land grew bare, and from a hill-top I saw the Atlantic some five or six miles away, a desert of sand stretching between. We were soon on these sands—light, shifting, and intensely hot—a Sahara in miniature save for the presence of the fragrant broom in brief patches here and there. It was difficult riding, and reduced the pace of the pack-mules to something under three miles an hour. As we ploughed across the sand I saw Suera itself, the Picture City of Sidi M'godol, a saint of more than ordinary repute, who gave the city the name by which it is known to Europe. Suera or Mogador is built on a little tongue of land, and threatens sea and sandhills with imposing fortifications that are quite worthless from a soldier's point of view. Though the sight of a town brought regretful recollection that the time of journeying was over, Mogador, it must be confessed, did much to atone for the inevitable. It looked like a mirage city that the sand and sun had combined to call into brief existence—Moorish from end to end, dazzling white in the strong sun of early summer, and offering some suggestion of social life in the flags that were fluttering from the roof-tops of Consuls' houses. A prosperous city, one would have thought, the emporium for the desert trade with Europe, and indeed it was all this for many years. Now it has fallen from its high commercial estate; French enterprise has cut into and diverted the caravan routes, seeking to turn all the desert traffic to Dakkar, the new Bizerta in Senegal, or to the Algerian coast.

Salam and M'Barak praised Sidi M'godol, whose zowia lay plainly to be seen below the Marrakesh gate; the Susi muleteers, the boy, and the slave renewed their Shilha songs, thinking doubtless of the store of dollars awaiting them; but I could not conquer my regrets, though I was properly obliged to Sidi M'godol for bringing me in safety to his long home. Just before us a caravan from the South was pushing its way to the gates. The ungainly camels, seeing a resting-place before them, had plucked up their spirits and were shuffling along at a pace their drivers could hardly have enforced on the previous day. We caught them up, and the leaders explained that they were coming in from Tindouf in the Draa country, a place unexplored as yet by Europeans. They had suffered badly from lack of water on the way, and confirmed the news that the Bedouins had brought, of a drought unparalleled in the memory of living man. Sociable fellows all, full of contentment, pluck, and endurance, they lightened the last hour upon a tedious road.

At length we reached the strip of herbage that divides the desert from the town, a vegetable garden big enough to supply the needs of the Picture City, and full of artichokes, asparagus, egg plants, sage, and thyme. The patient labour of many generations had gone to reclaim this little patch from the surrounding waste.

We passed the graveyard of the Protestants and Catholics, a retired place that pleaded eloquently in its peacefulness for the last long rest that awaits all mortal travellers. Much care had made it less a cemetery than a garden, and it literally glowed and blazed with flowers—roses, geraniums, verbena, and nasturtiums being most in evidence. A kindly priest of the order of St. Francis invited us to rest, and enjoy the colour and fragrance of his lovingly-tended oasis. And while we rested, he talked briefly of his work in the town, and asked me of our journey. The place reminded me strongly of a garden belonging to another Brotherhood of the Roman Catholic Church, and set at Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, where, a few years ago, I saw the monks labouring among their flowers, with results no less happy than I found here.

After a brief rest we rode along the beach towards the city gate. Just outside, the camels had come to a halt and some town traders had gathered round the Bedouins to inquire the price of the goods brought from the interior, in anticipation of the morrow's market. Under the frowning archway of the water-port, where True Believers of the official class sit in receipt of custom, I felt the town's cobbled road under foot, and the breath of the trade-winds blowing in from the Atlantic. Then I knew that Sunset Land was behind me, my journey at an end.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] Mogador, called by the Moors "Suera," i.e. "The Picture."



THE END

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