A considerable olive grove, whose grey-green leaves shone like silver in the light breeze, offered shade and shelter to a large colony of doves. There was a thriving village, with a saint's tomb for chief attraction, and solid walls to suggest that the place does not enjoy perennial tranquillity. But even though there are strangers who trouble these good folk, their home could not have looked more charmingly a haunt of peace than it did. All round the village one saw orchards of figs, apricots, and pomegranate trees; the first with the leaves untouched by the summer heat, the apricots just at the end of their blossoming, and the pomegranates still in flower. In place of the dry, hard soil that was so trying to the feet of man and beast, there were here meadows in plenty, from which the irises had only lately died. I saw the common English dandelion growing within stone's throw of a clump of feathery palms.
Tired after the vigil of the previous night and the long hours that had led up to it, we reclined at our ease under the olives, determined to spend the night at Sidi el Muktar, some fifteen or twenty miles away. From there one can hunt the great bustard, and I had hoped to do so until I saw the animals that were to take us to the coast. Neither the bustard nor the gazelle, that sometimes roams Sidi el Muktar's plains, had anything to fear from those noble creatures. The kaid alone might have pursued bird or beast, but as his gun was innocent of powder and shot there would have been nothing but exercise to seek.
After a two-hours' rest, given in one case more to sleep than lunch, we moved on towards the village of Sidi el Muktar, passing some curious flat-topped hills called by the natives Haunk Ijjimmal.[48] The oasis had ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the road became as uninteresting as was our own crawling gait. I noticed that the Susi muleteers were travelling very sadly, that they had not among them an echo of the songs that had sounded so strangely on the previous day, and I bade Salam find the cause of the depression, and ask whether the young lad whose features had become pinched and drawn felt ill. Within a few moments the truth was out. The six men had eaten nothing save a little of the mules' barley since they left Marrakesh, and as they had been on short rations between Tiensiert and the Southern capital, their strength was beginning to give out. It was no part of my business to feed them; they had received "something in the hand" before they left the city, and could well have bought supplies for the road, but they had preferred to trust Providence, and hoped to live on a small part of the mules' barley and the daily gift of tea that had been promised. Under the circumstances, and though I had found reason to believe that they were lazy, feckless rogues enough, who really needed an iron-handed kaid to rule over them, I told Salam to pass word round that their wants would be supplied at the day's end. Then they picked up their old stride, and one by one resumed the love-songs of yesterday as we moved slowly over the plains to where, in the far distance, Sidi el Muktar stood between us and the fast setting sun, placed near to the junction of three provinces--Oulad bou Sba, through which we travelled, M'touga, famous for fleet horses, and Shiadma, where our road lay.