played merrily enough on the dry sandy ground, a few donkeys, covered with scars and half starved, stood in the scanty shade.  In a deep cleft below the outer wall women and girls, very scantily clad, were washing clothes in a pool that is reserved apparently for the use of the stricken village.  I was glad to leave the place behind me, after giving the unctuous keeper a gift for the sufferers that doubtless never reached them.  They tell me that no sustained attempt is made to deal medically with the disease, though many nasty concoctions are taken by a few True Believers, whose faith, I fear, has not made them whole.[46]

When it became necessary for us to leave Marrakesh the young shareef went to the city’s fandaks and inquired if they held muleteers bound for Mogador.  The Maalem had taken his team home along the northern road, our path lay to the south, through the province of the Son of Lions (Oulad bou Sba), and thence through Shiadma and Haha to the coast.  We were fortunate in finding the men we sought without any delay.  A certain kaid of the Sus country, none other than El Arbi bel Hadj ben Haida, who rules over Tiensiert, had sent six muleteers to Marrakesh to sell his oil, in what is the best southern market, and he had worked out their expenses on a scale that could hardly be expected to satisfy anybody but himself.

[Illustration:  IN THE FANDAK]

“From Tiensiert to Marrakesh is three days journey,” he had said, and, though it is five, no man contradicted him, perhaps because five is regarded as an unfortunate number, not to be mentioned in polite or religious society.  “Three days will serve to sell the oil and rest the mules,” he had continued, “and three days more will bring you home.”  Then he gave each man three dollars for travelling money, about nine shillings English, and out of it the mules were to be fed, the charges of n’zala and fandak to be met, and if there was anything over the men might buy food for themselves.  They dared not protest, for El Arbi bel Hadj ben Haida had every man’s house in his keeping, and if the muleteers had failed him he would have had compensation in a manner no father of a family would care to think about.  The oil was sold, and the muleteers were preparing to return to their master, when Salam offered them a price considerably in excess of what they had received for the whole journey to take us to Mogador.  Needless to say they were not disposed to let the chance go by, for it would not take them two days out of their way, so I went to the fandak to see mules and men, and complete the bargain.  There had been a heavy shower some days before, and the streets were more than usually miry, but in the fandak, whose owner had no marked taste for cleanliness, the accumulated dirt of all the rainy season had been stirred, with results I have no wish to record.  A few donkeys in the last stages of starvation had been sent in to gather strength by resting, one at least was too