A PARTING MONA--FORDING SHESHAOUA RIVER--JARS OF FOOD--FIRST SIGHT OF MARRAKESH--A PERILOUS CROSSING--RIDE INTO MARRAKESH--THE SLAVE MARKET.
"We who are old, old and gay, O so old! Thousands of years, thousands of years, If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world, Rest far from men. Is anything better, anything better? Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gay, O so old! Thousands of years, thousands of years, If all were told."
WE were once more upon the march; and yet all links with the kasbah were not broken, for we had gone but a short way when a servant ran after us, carrying a familiar dish, known from afar--a parting mona. Laid at our feet, we tasted, as courtesy demanded, a coos-coosoo made of grated almonds, powdered sugar, and cream--a sweet which cloys at an early hour in the day, though to Moorish servants, at any and every moment of their lives, it is as caviare to the few. A circle was formed round the dish: in two minutes, all that was left, was "an aching china blank."
Quantity rather than quality distinguishes Moorish cookery. The rich man's dishes are more or less like the poor man's, only that he has six times as many; indeed, there are said to be dishes of coos-coosoo which seven men can barely carry. The Sultan's own cuisine is quite simple, better served, and more of it perhaps, than his subjects', but otherwise exactly the same.
Having disposed of the mona, our cavalcade started, and we rode down to the Sheshaoua River, still in heavy flood, but fordable since the fine night. The waters roared past between the crumbling banks: we saw in one place waggon-loads of red soil suddenly subside with a vast noise into the cataract which had undermined it. Upon the brink the men stripped themselves; then, wading into the torrent, hauled across mules, camel, and donkey one by one: we took our feet out of the stirrups, and managed to keep dry; the camel behaved admirably.
It was an uneventful day, across a bleak and stony country. Towards evening we passed a ruined kasbah, rose-red in the sunset. Riding due east, our long sharp shadows pointed ahead: there was a peace over all things. The shadowed heights on the right, scooped into blue gullies and mighty crests, carried a veil of cloud on their tops: the good little red path we were on, was without a stone. As the sun dropped we swung along into a dim grey beyond, to the muffled tramp, tramp of the mules' hoofs, _shuffle-shuffle through the night_, while a cool breeze got up, and a flight of birds high above us called aloud as they passed over. Ah! but how good it was!--no telegrams, no conventionalities, no possessions worth worry or consideration. Strange, the influence which such a simple life has upon the mind: letters, and newspapers, and the topics of the day, and the world in general, have little interest for the time being, and get buried in the wastepaper-basket of trivialities, while the weather, and the state of the track, and little things in Nature, assume gigantic proportions and fill the mind.