comes and goes upon winged feet.  Before the beds were taken to pieces and Salam had the porridge and his “marmalade” ready, with steaming coffee, for early breakfast, we heard the mules clattering down the stony street.  Within half an hour the packing comedy had commenced.  The Susi muleteer, who was accompanied by a boy and four men, one a slave, and all quite as frowzy, unwashed, and picturesque as himself, swore that we did not need four pack-mules but eight.  Salam, his eyes flaming, and each separate hair of his beard standing on end, cursed the shameless women who gave such men as the Susi muleteer and his fellows to the kingdom of my Lord Abd-el-Aziz, threw the shwarris on the ground, rejected the ropes, and declared that with proper fittings the mules, if these were mules at all, and he had his very serious doubts about the matter, could run to Mogador in three days.  Clearly Salam intended to be master from the start, and when I came to know something more about our company, the wisdom of the procedure was plain.  Happily for one and all Mr. Nairn came along at this moment.  It was not five o’clock, but the hope of serving us had brought him into the cold morning air, and his thorough knowledge of the Shilha tongue worked wonders.  He was able to send for proper ropes at an hour when we could have found no trader to supply them, and if we reached the city gate that looks out towards the south almost as soon as the camel caravan that had waited without all night, the accomplishment was due to my kind friend who, with Mr. Alan Lennox, had done so much to make the stay in Marrakesh happily memorable.

It was just half-past six when the last pack-mule passed the gate, whose keeper said graciously, “Allah prosper the journey,” and, though the sun was up, the morning was cool, with a delightfully fresh breeze from the west, where the Atlas Mountains stretched beyond range of sight in all their unexplored grandeur.  They seemed very close to us in that clear atmosphere, but their foot hills lay a day’s ride away, and the natives would be prompt to resent the visit of a stranger who did not come to them with the authority of a kaid or governor whose power and will to punish promptly were indisputable.  With no little regret I turned, when we had been half an hour on the road, for a last look at Ibn Tachfin’s city.  Distance had already given it the indefinite attraction that comes when the traveller sees some city of old time in a light that suggests every charm and defines none.  I realised that I had never entered an Eastern city with greater pleasure, or left one with more sincere regret, and that if time and circumstance had been my servants I would not have been so soon upon the road.