strolling along and regarding the skies, R. and myself with an exaggerated superciliousness. They were laden with dates, carpets, and slippers from Fez, and, together with mules and donkeys, constitute the vans and railway-trucks of Morocco, substituting over the face of the land a dilatory calm in the place of speed and bustle.

But at first it was a real effort to take in a tenth part of surroundings so different from those of England; and when we found ourselves in the sok—the hub of Moorish life—it was to be jostled by donkey-drivers shouting "Baarak! Baarak!" by black water-carriers from the Sus country, by veiled women, by negroes from Timbuctoo, by mules and camels, by men walking, men riding, without one sight or sound familiar, in a dream-world of intense life, recalling nothing so much as the Old Testament. It was worth the journey out from home to see this sok—an open space crawling with brown-and-white, cloaked and hooded humanity, mixed up with four-legged beasts, also brown, and the whole more like a magnified ant-hill on the flat than anything human. In front of the squatted country people their stock-in-trade lay in piles, gorgeous in tone: oranges and oranges and more oranges, selling at one thousand seven hundred for a shilling; scarlet chillies—hot blots of colour; pink onions; red carrots; white salt, collected down on the beach; green pumpkins blotched with yellow; besides grain of all sorts, basketsful of charcoal, bundles of wood, dried fruit, flat round loaves of bread, cabbages, and what not. The sound of a perpetual muffin-bell was ringing backwards and forwards—the bhisti of Tangier, with his hairy goatskinful of water across his back, and two bright brass bowls hung by a chain round his neck, a bell in one hand, with the other dealing out drinks of water for a Moorish copper coin of which a penny contains fifteen.

We elbowed our way through the Báb-el-Sok, or Gate of the Market-place, into the city, and found ourselves in a long, narrow, straight street, dropping down to the marsa, or harbour. The irregular, light colour-washed houses jut out promiscuously over the minute cupboard-like shops crammed with oddments of every sort and hue, and leaving scanty room for the owner to squat on some carpet or mattress, until it strikes him that it is time to eat or go to prayers, and he locks up the double doors of his "store cupboard" and strolls away.

Looking down this attenuated Piccadilly of Tangier, over the white turbans and red fezes of the multitude, right away at the far end a field of blue sea was to be seen: half-way between, the faithful were beginning to pass into the big mosque one by one for midday prayers, each leaving his shoes behind him and stepping over the high doorstep barefoot on to the marble floor beyond, thence disappearing behind the ponderous green iron doors, where the great line is drawn between Europeans and Asiatics, debarring from entry any except Mussulmen.

The Villa Valentina breakfasted at 12.45, and cut the morning short. We were out again later with a guide—Hadj Riffi he called himself—bent on a visit to the Kasbah, or fortress of the city.

Hadj Riffi provided a donkey and pack, which of all substitutes for saddles is most foolish, intended only for loads of all sorts to be slung across them; but packs are easy to slip off and on, and have answered their purpose in Morocco since the days when in Judæa Mary rode on one to Bethlehem.

Conducted through the queer, intricate city, we wound along maze-like alleys three or four feet wide, ever the old aromatic smell of the East, almost impossible to recall, yet recognized again in an instant's flash, and born of the Oriental world we jostled against—of Berbers, Arabs, negroes, men from the Sahara, men from the mountains of the Riff, Turks, Greeks, Levantines, Syrians, even an occasional Hindoo, all wanderers up and down the earth, unable to resist the call of the open road, engendered by nomadic habits of old.

R. on a Pack.

One word on the inhabitants of the country. The Berbers are the aborigines of Morocco, and live more or less in the hills and mountains, into which they were driven by the Arabs in the seventh century, when they overran Morocco. The Arabs, on the other hand, live in the plains; and Arabs and Berbers practically halve the country between them. Both peoples divide into numerous tribes, of which the men from the Riff are a Berber tribe. The negroes in Morocco are merely slaves imported from the south. One and all the Arab and Berber tribes are called indiscriminately by Europeans "Moors." The other wanderers in Tangier filter through the land from their own countries: who can tell why or wherefore? Hadj Riffi himself had obeyed his Prophet Mohammed in so far as to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. A journey the prospect of which would horrify a tradesman at home is undertaken by an earnest-minded shop-keeping Moor as a matter of course. What are the twelve uncomfortable days by sea to Jeddah? Or the journey thence to Mecca, lying stretched in a long pannier on one side of a camel, balanced by a second pilgrim in a pannier on the other side, and over the whole an awning spread? But this luxurious travelling is for the rich pilgrim, who swings silently along day after day, under the burning sun or the cold stars, across the tideless sea of sand, towards an illimitable horizon. Hadj Riffi "footed it," spent three days at Mecca, at this time transformed into a city of a myriad tents, among which it is easy enough to be lost, teeming with pilgrims—Chinese, Hindoos, Circassians, Georgians, Bosnians—most of them unable to understand each other, beyond a verse or two from the Korān and a few pious ejaculations.

Hadj Riffi and his fellow-Moors prayed three days at Mecca, and performed the ceremonies round the celebrated Kāaba, the chief shrine and holiest of all holy places, built by Adam and Eve after the pattern of their own Sanctum Sanctorum in the Garden of Eden.

The far-famed Black Stone, presented to the masons by the Angel Gabriel, built into the east corner of the outer wall of the Kāaba, is a semicircular fragment of volcanic basalt, sprinkled with coloured crystals, about six by eight inches large, bordered with silver, and the surface of it reddish brown, undulating, and polished.

Having kissed the Black Stone and performed other rites, the Moors went three days' journey to the Prophet's Mountain to pray; then they took themselves back to Morocco, but on their way, missing a steamer, were obliged to travel by land through Tunis, which took them five months, and, running short of money, lived, Hadj Riffi said, largely on roots.

In the meantime he urged our donkey along, breaking his discourse with "Arrah! Arrah!" until at last it was cajoled under the gateway and into the Kasbah. This fortress, reported a good specimen of Moorish architecture, could impress nobody: it has no regular garrison; the batteries are antiquated, the artillery hopelessly inefficient. The crumbling battlements are overgrown with rank grass and fig-trees, though tradition has it they were once brass, when the city was built of gold and silver.

Tangier is immensely old, and has seen many conquerors, many demolitions. Arabs, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, Spaniards, and Portuguese have all in their turn besieged and taken, ruled and deserted, the white city. England has had her turn too. When Charles II. married Catherine of Braganza, Tangier and Bombay formed part of her dowry and passed into British hands. The