greaves—such as the Greek peasantry wore—to protect their legs. They carry bill-hooks to cut their way through the thickets, and bring along a tribe of native dogs, which do good service—a cross between a collie and a jackal, veteran poachers, which prowl through the scrub, winding a boar at any distance. The thickets where pig lie are for the most part backed by the sea, and bordered by lake and marsh or plain, in which case it is not difficult to inveigle the driven boar to break where the guns are posted. A haunch of wild pig judiciously roasted, with a soupçon of wine in the gravy, is one of the delicacies of Morocco. As many as fifteen boars have been accounted for in a couple of days' shooting.

The sun went down; the soft air grew colder: we walked quickly back through the outskirts of Tangier, between gardens full of plumbago, dituria, geraniums, hibiscus, pointsettias, narcissus, frescia, and roses of all sorts, besides other flowers. Anything would grow in a soil which has been known to bear three crops of potatoes in one year, and where corn is sometimes sown and reaped all within the space of forty days.

An enterprising English market-gardener is this year growing vegetables and fruit for the London market, expecting to have green peas in Covent Garden in December, the duty on peas and tomatoes having been lowered to 5 per cent. This man acts as agent to a land-owner. Fortunes, indeed, might be made, if it were not a question of find the land; for while land cannot now be bought in Morocco by Europeans, the few fortunates who own inherited acres price them high, and, hoping for a boom in the course of the next fifteen years, demand £400 an acre.

As we turned into the Villa Valentina a wonderful opal light warmed the white city and the sand-hills—they were no longer cold nor colourless; while banks of "rose" sunset-clouds were reflected "rose" in a grey-green sea.

Tangier has two sides to it—one native, the other European. The European side is all which appears on the surface, and it swamps the other. Given each of the eleven Powers, with its minister, its minister's family, its secretary, its attaché, its interpreter, its student; add to these a handful of English residents, a handful of English and American visitors, and a handful of varied nationalities thrown in; back them up with the necessary foundation of purveyors, and lower down still a substratum of leeches and black-sheep, greedy Jews, needy Spaniards, introducing drink and tobacco and gambling,—and there you have before you all the elements of a highly civilized town on the Mediterranean shore. It may be Tangier: it is not Morocco.

Tangier.

The Moorish aristocracy themselves speak of the place as "Christian-ridden Tangier," and will have none of it: the Sultan says it "no longer belongs to him." Its trade is nil, and what there is of it is in the hands of the Jews, who boast eleven synagogues, schools, and a Grand Rabbi at the head of all.

We brought introductions with us to various people, and met with every hospitality in Tangier. Sir Arthur and Lady Nicolson, representing Great Britain, do all in their power for visitors; and the colony of mixed nationalities fills its off hours together, most successfully, with a round of picnics, afternoon rides, tea parties, and other amusements, implied by "wintering at Tangier"; from all of which any knowledge of Morocco, or association with Moors, is far removed indeed.

A seaport which has neither roads nor railways to connect it with the surrounding country, is isolated a week's journey from the nearest capital town, and whose links with the outer world all tend seawards through steamers to foreign countries, can never constitute a study of the land to which it belongs only by right of position.

But Morocco itself had brought us to the north of Africa. Tangier could only be a base for future operations, and consequently a fortnight of Tangier sufficed, finding us bent upon moving on, before the heavy rains broke, and the swollen rivers made travelling impossible. Travelling in Morocco is never at the best of times luxurious. "Say explore, rather than travel," somebody writes, speaking of Morocco; and many were the injunctions and warnings which the post brought us from friends at home—above all, to expect no ransoms, in the event of capture by lawless tribes.

It is true that a Wanderjahr in Morocco has not the luxuries of travel in India; and Englishmen who would break new ground must wear Moorish dress, talk Arabic, and prepare to face considerable risks, with the off-chance of writing in some such strain as Davidson: "To-day I have parted with all my hair except one long tuft over my right ear. I never expect to become white again. My beard is very long. My legs covered with bites of vermin. My cheek-bones prominent, and my teeth sharp from having very little to do."

Not that R. and myself had such adventures in view; but we believed that even as humble followers in the tracks of others we should find no lack of interest in a country so little known, among a people of "The Arabian Nights," under conditions which tempt the Unexpected to stalk out from behind every corner.