The road from Marrakesh to Mogador is as pleasant as traveller could wish, lying for a great part of the way through fertile land, but it is seldom followed, because of the two unbridged rivers N’fiss and Sheshoua.  If either is in flood (and both are fed by the melting snows from the Atlas Mountains), you must camp on the banks for days together, until it shall please Allah to abate the waters.  Our lucky star was in the ascendant; we reached Wad N’fiss at eleven o’clock to find its waters low and clear.  On the far side of the banks we stayed to lunch by the border of a thick belt of sedge and bulrushes, a marshy place stretching over two or three acres, and glowing with the rich colour that comes to southern lands in April and in May.  It recalled to me the passage in one of the stately choruses of Mr. Swinburne’s Atalanta in Calydon, that tells how “blossom by blossom the spring begins.”

The intoxication that lies in colour and sound has ever had more fascination for me than the finest wine could bring:  the colour of the vintage is more pleasing than the taste of the grape.  In this forgotten corner the eye and ear were assailed and must needs surrender.  Many tiny birds of the warbler family sang among the reeds, where I set up what I took to be a Numidian crane, and, just beyond the river growths, some splendid oleanders gave an effective splash of scarlet to the surrounding greens and greys.  In the waters of the marsh the bullfrogs kept up a loud sustained croak, as though they were True Believers disturbed by the presence of the Infidels.  The N’fiss is a fascinating river from every point of view.  Though comparatively small, few Europeans have reached the source, and it passes through parts of the country where a white man’s presence would be resented effectively.  The spurs of the Atlas were still clearly visible on our left hand, and needless to say we had the place to ourselves.  There was not so much as a tent in sight.

At last M’Barak, who had resumed his place at the head of our little company, and now realised that we had prolonged our stay beyond proper limits, mounted his horse rather ostentatiously, and the journey was resumed over level land that was very scantily covered with grass or clumps of irises.  The mountains seemed to recede and the plain to spread out; neither eye nor glass revealed a village; we were apparently riding towards the edge of the plains.  The muleteer and his companions strode along at a round pace, supporting themselves with sticks and singing melancholy Shilha love-songs.  Their mules, recollection of their good meal of the previous evening being forgotten, dropped to a pace of something less than four miles an hour, and as the gait of our company had to be regulated by the speed of its slowest member, it is not surprising that night caught us up on the open and shut out a view of the billowy plain that seemingly held no resting-place.  How I missed the little Maalem, whose tongue would have been a spur to the