Outside, towards the east, its gardens were numerous: great black poplars and palms grew freely. For an hour we rode alongside a district which belonged entirely to Mulai el Hadj, the great man of Tamsloect, and a holy Shar[=i]f to boot. This man is rich, and because he is a holy Shar[=i]f he can never be dispossessed of his wealth. His white house and cypress-trees stand out prominently in the village we had just left; throughout his gardens he has built a succession of water-towers, which irrigate his land; he is British-protected, and as important a man in the south as the French-protected Wazeer of Wazan is in the north.
All this time we were riding steadily towards Marrakesh, interest increasing with every step as we neared the city, to visit which we had left Mogador about ten days before.
That last day's march was not an interesting one: the great Atlas, upon which we had now turned our backs, were no longer to be seen, on account of clouds which the last night's storm had brought upon them; the plain over which we rode possessed a deadly monotony, for we were not entering Marrakesh upon its best side, where gardens upon gardens of palm-trees stretch beyond the city gates for miles and miles, but our road from Tamsloect was prosaic and dull. Certainly we crossed some of the wonderful underground canals, which carry water five and ten miles, from springs in the country, into the city--about whose origin nothing whatever is known, tradition remaining silent as to any builder. These great works are merely water-ways tunnelled through the solid earth, not at any great distance from the surface: along their courses the streams are conducted for great distances. There are openings at intervals which ventilate the tunnels: these are kept clean and easily examined by means of the same. The whole arrangement is very rough, very primitive, but perfectly answers the purpose for which it was made.
The crops which we left behind us at every mile looked well, and it was to be hoped would soon make good the failure of the preceding crop: that failure had accounted for the skinny children and lean women whom we had met, and was the reason of the country people's continuous digging for ayerna root, and washing the same by the roadside and in so many villages.