Read Ebook: In the Tail of the Peacock by Savory Isabel

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Some day we may know the Sahara under other conditions, for a scheme was started years ago with the intention of flooding the great desert by means of a canal from the Atlantic Ocean, which should carry water on to El Joof, an immense depression well below sea-level somewhere in the centre. Thus, where all is now sand, would lie a vast sea: we should "boat" to Timbuctoo. So far, however, the scheme has begun and ended in words.

But though the great Sahara is desert pure and simple, it is a mistake to imagine it devoid of life. Even as there has never yet been found a collection of aborigines without its totem, neither are there any extensive parts of the globe where life of some sort does not exist. The Sahara is little known, chiefly because the oases in the centre are occupied by intensely hostile and warlike tribes, whose animosity is chiefly directed towards the French, whom they hate with a deadly hatred. But the edges of the great desert have been visited, and on the northern limits two animals are found--the addax antelope, and Loder's gazelle. The wide-spread hoofs of the addax antelope enable it to travel over sand at a great pace. It is a large and ungainly beast with spiral horns. Probably it follows in the wake of the rains wherever they go; but what happens to it in the dry season is unknown. Similarly with Loder's gazelle: though more or less a desert animal, it is a mystery how it remains alive through the long rainless months, in places apparently without water, and on wastes of rolling, wind-drifted sand.

Of the natural inhabitants of desert country, the Sahara is by no means devoid: sand-lizards, jumping-mice, sand-grouse, sand-vipers, desert-larks, and even a family of snakes belonging to the boas, are to be found. The khki-coloured sand-grouse are most difficult to see on the yellow face of the country: the sand-rats and sand-moles all take on the colour of their surroundings, and thus hide and protect themselves: one and all exist in some marvellous manner where it would seem that existence could only be miraculous. The skink is met with, beloved of the Romans, who imported desert-skinks into Rome in Pliny's day, and held them a valuable remedy for consumption, chopped up into a sort of white wine: the trade was brisk in 1581. To-day the Arabs consider it a remedy, and eat it as a food. It acts very much in the same way as do flat-fish in the bottom of the sea, sinking itself under the sand, allowing the sand to lie over its back and cover it, like a flounder, only leaving its sharp eyes out of cover, and sometimes the spines on its back.

For the maintenance of all this animal life, it is quite possible that rain may occasionally fall even upon desert, and disappear with lightning-like rapidity; for on the borders of certain African deserts in the north a phenomenon very much like the description of the Mosaic manna occurs when the plains have been wetted with rain. The surface is seen next morning "covered with little white globes like tiny puff-balls, the size of a bird-cherry, or spilled globes of some large grain." It is gathered and eaten by the Arabs, but, like an unsubstantial fungus growth, melts or rots in the course of a day or two.

Enough of the Sahara. Meeting with men in Mogador who had come straight from the mysterious country, veiled, untamed, and remotely removed from European touch, our interest was naturally kindled in that Back of the Beyond. There is no need for the traveller to penetrate so far as either the Sahara or the Sus. Long before he reaches them, and in order to do so, he must cross the Atlas Mountains by one of the wild passes, and the great chain of the Atlas is still unsurveyed and practically unknown. Sir Joseph Hooker and Dr. Ball explored a part of its valleys many years ago: no one since then has made a satisfactory attempt to learn details. The chain is supposed to be about thirteen thousand feet high, and it is about twenty miles from Morocco City; but the character of the lawless chiefs and tribesmen who inhabit it, so far prevents intrusion and exploration.

In a few days we were to see it--the mighty, solitary wall, on which the ancients believed the world to rest, described by Pliny, rising abruptly out of the plains, snowclad, one of the world's finest sights: the Atlas had largely brought us to Southern Morocco.

ON THE MARCH ONCE MORE--BUYING MULES--A BAD ROAD--FIRST CAMP--ARGAN-TREES--COOS-COOSOO--A TERRIBLE NIGHT--DOCTORING THE KHAYLIFA--ROUGHING IT UNDER CANVAS.

And all this time you are drinking champagne , and sleeping in soft beds with delicious white sheets, and smoking Turkish cigarettes, and wearing clean clothes, with nice stiff collars and shirt-cuffs, and having great warm baths in marble bath-rooms and sweet-smelling soap . . . and sitting side by side at table, first a man and then a woman--the same old arrangement, I suppose--knives to the right and forks to the left, as usual.

Mr. Maddon, the British Consul at Mogador, to whom we brought letters of introduction from Sir Arthur Nicolson, helped us in several ways, and in his turn provided us with letters to an Arab in Marrakesh. We managed to buy two mules: one was from the Sus, with a backbone like a sword-fish and every rib showing, but he was as hard as nails, and would pace along all day without any trouble; the other was a lazy beast, fat and older; but they both of them proved useful animals, answering our purpose for the time being. We meant to sell, when we left the country: hiring is expensive work. Of course it was "just a dear time to buy": it always is. The Jew broker, through whom we bought the mules from the Susi to whom they belonged, asked seven pounds ten for each of them, but came down to six pounds fifteen. We sold them some weeks later for five guineas each: hiring would have cost a great deal more. Ordinarily they are to be bought for five pounds and less in Mogador. No Susi will trade direct with a European, and every bargain goes through Israel's hands, which means a big percentage pocketed by the Jew.

Our hotel-keeper, the Scotch lady, provided us with reliable servants, one of whom turned out to be invaluable. Mulai Omar was, as his name indicates, a saint by heredity. Algeria was his birthplace. He was twenty-four years old; and having lived in a French possession, spoke French, not like S`lam, but perfectly. He was a well-educated little fellow, enterprising, energetic; interpreted Arabic and Shillah for us; acted as cook, in which capacity he was first-rate; generally organized the camp; and was our personal servant. Mulai Omar was quite a man to know, and a friend to trust. He was unattractive-looking--small, dark, and dirty; wore a red fez, a short black monkey-jacket, and immense, full, white cotton drawers. Sa?d, our second servant, intended to look after the mules, was a lazy Arab, who acted the fine gentleman, and was never without a cigarette in his mouth. He helped Omar more or less, and was responsible for much loss of temper on our parts, before we parted. Another saint by heredity, Mulai Ombach, looked after our camel, which carried the heavy baggage. Our fourth and last man, Mohammed, drove a donkey, nominally for the purpose of carrying provender for the mules and camel, but which often as not bore either Mulai Ombach or Mohammed himself. The two principal servants, Omar and Sa?d, rode two mules, which carried light loads as well.

We hired a couple of Moorish men's saddles for our own use, red-clothed, high-peaked, and well stuffed; also two big tents--one for the servants, one for ourselves. Our commissariat was not hard to manage, helped out with stores we had brought from Tangier; for bearing in mind Napoleon's truism that "the army marches on its stomach," we had laid in an ample supply.

Eleven o'clock saw us finally under way on the morning of the 31st. We had intended to start at nine; but any one who has ever travelled and camped out knows the difficulty of getting away upon that first morning--the final wrench between the servants and their old surroundings, the dozen petty obstacles. In this case one of the mules hired for baggage turned out to be in a wretched condition when it came to the hotel, and another had to be found in its place--no easy matter. The camel was started off at half-past ten with our beds, bedding, cuisine necessaries, part of the tents, and chairs and table; but, to our disgust, Mulai Ombach, its driver, stopped short at the bazaar, and there we found them both when we rode through the city. They were hurried up, and the whole party seen safely through the city gates; but once outside, the camel was so slow that we left them behind, R. and myself jogging ahead with Mulai Omar and Sa?d, trusting that the heavy baggage would catch us up at lunch-time. One more delay--outside the Jewish cemetery was standing, waiting for us, the wife of Sa?d: many tears were flowing, and sobs to be heard under the haik. Sa?d produced some dollars, which were no doubt intended to last her during her husband's absence: he then rode on without attempting a farewell, and we were really off at last.

For the first five miles we hugged the coast in a northerly direction, keeping close to the sea: the tide was high; in one place, where we made a short cut, resulting in rather a nasty bit of riding, we were actually in the waves, slipping over black rock, with deep pools on each side. It was a grey day, not hot, and the hard flat sands, across which we rode for the most part, were excellent going.

The only wayfarers we met, tramped along behind camels. Untrustworthy brutes these animals are, especially the bubbling ones, out of whose way we most cautiously kept; for though a camel seldom bites, when he does it is serious. He never forgets an injury. A man in Mogador ill-treated one badly a few years ago: it went into the interior for a year, and came back to Mogador, and met and knew the man at once, taking him by the nape of the neck, as is its habit, and tearing the back of his skull off.

Only half-an-hour's halt we allowed ourselves; then saddled up, and were off again. Still through "jungle," and by a sandy path the trail led us, blocked often by stones and rocks, truly one of those

. . . sad highways, left at large To ruts and stones and lovely Nature's skill, Who is no pavior.

The flowers became more interesting at every step; but there was little time to get off and collect specimens, though the path was so narrow that, riding along, pink climbing convolvulus and tall lavender could easily be gathered off the bushes. For any unknown specimen some one dismounted, and it was stowed away in an empty tin kettle for safety.

By-and-by we dropped down into a narrow valley, green and cultivated: a lonely palm-tree or two stuck up--the "feather duster struck by lightning" of Mark Twain. A fine crop of beans was growing on our right, Indian corn and barley to the left: the land looked full of heart, rich, and unlike even the Tetuan country. We came across a man or two working in a dirty white tunic in the fields, and left behind some wretched huts down by a spring. About this time we lost Omar's dog, which was to have been our guard--a rather lame lurcher, which thought better of footing it all the way to Marrakesh.

The country was full of magpies--not nearly so smart as our Warwickshire mags, brownish about the tail, and with less white; yet they could scarcely have been in bad plumage at that time of year. In a narrow pathway we stood aside to let a camel pass: since we had left the coast wayfarers had grown rare for the most part. The place at which we had halted for lunch was El Faidar, within sight of one of Morocco's countless little white saint-houses--Sidi Bousuktor. Now, after a long climb over a ridge, we looked down from the top into a valley--Ain-el-Hadger; and Omar pointed out in the distance the spot he suggested we should camp at for the night. Descending the ridge was the roughest piece of riding on the road to Marrakesh: the shale gave way under the mules' feet; great rocks projected on the track. None of us dismounted, however: Tetuan had hardened our hearts and accustomed us to awkward corners, and the mules were clever. Slowly we slipped and slid down into the most luxuriant green vale, set in the scrub-covered hills, carpeted with fields of young corn, olive-trees, gardens, fruit-trees, and flowers abundantly.

To the north, upon our left, lay the Iron Mountains, no very great height, somewhere about two thousand feet, and famous for iron in the days of the Romans and Carthaginians, who both probably worked them. Now they are mined no more, and only known as the favourite quarters of wild boar, signs of whose existence we saw for ourselves, in patches of ground rooted and torn up.

We rode down through these fruitful acres as the sun was getting low: here and there lay a little white farmer's house; birds were everywhere--suddenly we heard a cuckoo, then a nightingale.

At a place where three little glens met we passed a tall look-out tower, standing sentry over each one, from the top of which the Ain-el-Hadger people could easily see an enemy coming. In England it would have been a ruin: in Morocco it was in active use,--it is still "the Middle Ages" in Morocco.

Leaving a garden on the left, surrounded by a high tapia wall, we crossed a little streamlet into the brook which waters the valley, and reached at last a corner surrounded with grey olives, deep in lush grass, and overlooked by the inevitable quaint white-domed saint-house on the top of a rocky hillock. It was an ideal spot. Omar and Sa?d laid their two guns under a tree ; we off-saddled, unloaded the two men's mules, and unpacked what there was to unpack, the camel having practically everything. R. and I strolled about and photographed. A countryman brought us three fowls and some eggs. The sun set. Still the wretched camel had not come. Dew fell heavily, and Omar made a famous fire and supplied us with hot green tea. At last there were voices; a great form loomed in the darkness and swung towards us; the donkey followed. It was not long before the camel was unloaded, our big tent up, table and chairs and beds put together, and though dinner was late it was the more acceptable, The Saint proving a chef. A pannierful of bread was part of the camel's luggage, and intended to last us until we got to Marrakesh: vegetables we had in plenty for the first two or three days. And Omar worked wonders with the means at his disposal. Early we turned in: the stars were out; the frogs croaked in the streamlets. With the tent-flap tied back, and looking out into the quiet night, we slept as sound as tramps on the roadside at home.

I woke at 2 a.m. The guard had stopped talking, and were all asleep and snoring round the tents, except one old greybeard, who was sitting up by the fire. Four Ain-el-Hadger men had come to act as guard for the night, bringing their guns and long knives with them. It was oddly light--the "false dawn" of Omar Khayym; but there were no stars.

Such a dawn woke us at five! Every bird for miles around was singing: blackbirds sounded like England, wood-pigeons cooed, cuckoos insisted, and among them all, strange and Indian, a hoopoe called. The sun climbed up behind the saint-house and solitary palm; the olives began to cast shadows; the grass was silver with dew. We breakfasted soon after six, our table out on the green lawn. Such air and scents of moist earth! It was chilly too. The mules fed busily in the long wet grass; behind the kitchen-tent the camel lay, chewing; an old sheikh turned up on a donkey, and joined the servants at breakfast round the fire, at one of those meals which were all green tea and tobacco.

Just as we were starting a party of fifteen sheikhs and countrymen rode up on their way to a distant "powder play" at the f?te of some saint, two days' journey off. Passing our camp, they turned into a little three-cornered field of much poppies and little corn, and proceeded to bivouac for an hour or two. Tailing one after another through a gap in the hedge, on the finest barbs Southern Morocco can produce, heavy, but handsome in their way , they pulled up underneath some dense green fig-trees, and dismounted in the shade, leaving their scarlet cloth saddles to match the poppies.

There was colour running riot indeed. Several of the stately figures, all in white, walked up to the saint-house to pray: one great man waddled down to the stream , and a few began to groom their horses. The guns were piled: the sun glinted on them and on the silver-chased stirrups, and blazed on the snowy garments, on the poppies, and the saddles, one of which was blue, another yellow. We were in the land of Arabs: the Berbers were left behind at Mogador, and these tall lean horsemen, burnt coffee-coloured, were all descendants of the sons of the desert.

The Ain-el-Hadger guard had each received a trifle for his night's services; Sa?d had groomed and brought up our mules; we mounted, and, followed by himself and Omar, perched on the top of the two packs, their guns sticking out at one side, rode away. The first few miles were not marked by anything of particular interest: the collections of huts and bare walls which sometimes adorned the hillsides were far away; the curious piles of stones in the fields, almost like scarecrows, were only landmarks. But after a time we rode into the country of the argan-tree, that most interesting and unique specimen, which flourishes in this corner of Morocco, covering an area about two hundred miles long and forty wide, and growing nowhere else in the known world. Southern Morocco would be lost indeed without argan oil, which is used for cooking purposes as a substitute for butter, and of which we had with us a large supply. The oil is extracted from the fruit of the tree: at the end of March it should be fit to gather, looking much like a large olive, and possessed of a green fleshy husk, greedily eaten by camels, goats, sheep, and oxen. Thus, as well as gathering the nuts themselves off the ground, the country people allow their flocks to feed upon the fruit: having driven them home, the animals chew the cud, disgorging the argan nuts, which are collected, and eventually cracked by women and children in order to obtain oil.

The average height of the tree is twenty-five feet, but its rugged side branches will cover a space of seventy feet. Gnarled and twisted, the bark is a little like crocodile-skin, and forms in squares: the trunk has a way of folding upon itself, too, as it grows--slowly; for a large tree may be three hundred years old, and in consequence its wood is immensely hard. The argan is more or less tropical: though a tree has been known to live against a south wall in England, it was killed by the first severe winter.

Among the argans, little oxen were ploughing the red rich soil of the vale through which we rode; it was watered by a brook, and real hedges of pomegranate, out in brilliant flower, divided the fields. In one of these some Arabs were digging carrots; in another homely potatoes, the first we had seen, were doing remarkably well.

As we jogged on, the great barley-fields, all in ear, though still green, might have led us to believe we were in England, except that in the next sheltered spot a white saint-house would be found, with its dome and its palm-tree, perhaps a shady olive grove, allowed to flourish for the sake of the holy place. Yes, it was Africa.

Farther on, an Arab village lay close to the track, no windows in its yellowish flat walls, apparently no roofs: a stoned arched entrance was filled up with thorn-bushes, and the tops of the walls piled with the same to prevent outsiders from molesting the inmates. This warlike tendency was again shown in another watch-tower, built, like the last, at the conjunction of two valleys.

Meanwhile, the bare and uninteresting-looking Iron Mountains were disappearing from view: another ridge, which met them at right angles, spotted with argan-trees, looked in the distance like a tea or coffee plantation on Eastern hills--that too faded from sight; and we rode on--now through a blaze of flowers, for every hedge flamed pink and yellow, and even the dry thorns were blotted with colour--now past fields of mauve poppies and scarlet poppies and stretches of stainless blue. A white saint-house stood out against the colour, its dome like dazzling chalk, it shadows blue: we looked back at it from under an argan-tree, in the shade of which we rested for ten minutes, picking up a few nuts, and drinking long and deep out of Omar's stone water-jar.

We dismounted, and followed Omar into the thick of the fray, surrounded at once by a staring and interested crowd. It was an extraordinary scene. Streets were formed by rows upon rows of little mud cubicles, thatched over, inside which, on a mud shelf, the vendor sat, with his goods spread out for sale round him. Slippers were being mended; blacksmith's work was being done; cottons and stuffs were selling, sugar, groceries of all sorts, brand-new slippers and new clothes, vegetables and meat. Meat was the centre of the whirlpool, and round the carcases and shapeless joints the largest crowd: it hung on upright stakes and branches stuck in the ground, and the effect was that of a nightmare wood, in which the weird trees were bearing gory and dreadful fruit. It was all life and stir, that bare hillside; and by half-past one o'clock the whole thing had melted away, and there was no sign of a human being moving.

Mulai Omar was well known in Sok-el-Tleta, his wife's relatives living there: because he was a saint his clothes and slippers were kissed by every one who met us as we rode along to our camp beyond the Tuesday Market. We passed women and children digging for ayerna root: the corn not being yet ripe, they were short of food. The root of this weed, though eatable, is most unwholesome, and unless carefully prepared, people grow thinner and more yellow upon it daily.

But all our interest in a few moments was focussed upon a most imposing ruin, a real Windsor Castle of a rudimentary type, which commanded a hilltop on a table-land on the right, great walls rearing themselves up to the sky, towers defending every corner, a turreted gate-house the entrance, and the whole loop-holed, grim-looking enough. Obviously the kaid who built such a kasbah was a great man: his garden, a beautiful overgrown wilderness, gone like his castle to rack and ruin, lay below at Sok-el-Tleta, wisely situated, for vegetation would have been badly exposed upon the hilltop.

The wonderful cisterns were another feature of the kasbah, immense tanks underground, concreted and still water-tight--at the end of every dry season cleaned out and whitewashed, now half full of stinking rain-water and decay.

We got off at seven the next morning, struck the main road from Mogador, left it, and found ourselves in quite an agricultural country, green barley-fields, planted all over at intervals with figs and pomegranates, even hedges of a sort. Then again we were in the argan forest--the last of it, and the best: beautiful trees, with their knarled, twisted branches. I thought of yews on the Surrey hills. Here coarse grass grew between, something like a park at home: goats clambered up into the forks, feasting on the green fruit. But all too soon the argans came to an end, and we saw this phenomenon of Morocco no more.

When a single olive-tree appeared, we hailed its shade for lunch. The mules, hobbled together, grazed: Omar and Sa?d lay at a short distance, drinking green tea and smoking near the little fire they had lit. Botanical specimens had to be dried.

That evening we watched a blindfolded camel turning a water-wheel, and some wretched prisoners, with irons on their feet, who shuffled out of the gate and drew water. A black slave brought Kaid Mohammed's horses to water one by one; then made each roll on a sandy patch of ground, off which he first carefully picked every stone.

The sun streamed in at our tent door next morning, but we were at breakfast before it had more than left the horizon, and soon on our way through a rough country of scrub and olives--a capital country for pig , and practicable for spearing them, one would think. Jogging along little paths, with a cool breeze in our faces, which invariably went round with the sun, we came by-and-by to a valley, green and wooded with olives, where barley was growing, looking as if it had been kept under glass, it was such an even crop, and rooted in the richest soil. Crack--crack--ping! and a stone whistled over our heads: this meant Arab boys scaring birds with slings, made of dried grass, and probably after David's pattern.

From out of an Arab village a little black child ran with a bowl of very sour milk, which, however, Omar and Sa?d appreciated: the child wore one filthy whitish garment and a bead necklace, a little inky-black pigtail completing it.

This was a day of all days, in that we had our first view of the Atlas Mountains--those mountains which we had come so far to see. There they were, first seen from a certain ridge, mighty peaks, snow-covered, filling one with an intense desire to travel into their fastnesses: a haze, however, hid the greater part of the range.

A countryman joined us for a short distance, to whom Omar gave a cigarette-paper and a pinch of tobacco. Again all cultivation was exchanged for uncompromising plain, stones, stones, and a soil like iron, on which nothing grew except the thorny zizyphus lotus, with the double row of thorns, one pointing forward, the other back, out of which the Soudanese make their zarebas. A colony of bottle-shaped nests, made of dried grass, in these thorn-bushes, tempted me to try for some eggs. The attempt proved what a barrier the thorny lotus can be. I was extricated with difficulty by means of Omar's gun-barrels and Sa?d's hands; but not without one nest and eggs--they apparently belonged to a variety of sparrow.

It was five o'clock. An old sheikh or headman came out from between the thorn-barrier, welcomed us, and led the way inside to a perfectly impossible open space, a dunghill, amongst the huts, where we might camp; it was overrun with fowls, and covered with filth of every description. Therefore, though assured that we should be much safer within the zareba, and deeply against the wishes of the servants, we insisted upon leading the way outside, and choosing a spot as far removed from the fence as possible, though only too near for our own comfort. As soon as the tents were pitched and the sun had set, such a noise of goats bleating, and donkeys braying, and dogs barking, and children crying, arose, as we prayed it might not be our lot often to hear at the end of a hard day.

When Sir William Kirby Green died suddenly on an embassy in Marrakesh, a rekass carried the news to Mazagan, a hundred and sixty miles, in thirty-two hours; but the Vice-Consul told me that upon reaching his office the man fell down--he could not stand to tell the news.

We rode on, praying for a breeze which never came: the sun literally sizzled on the baked desert, the rocks gave out an oven-like heat, and the rarefied air oscillated over the wastes. It was too hazy for more than glimpses of the Atlas and their snows: as far as we could see stretched only illimitable drab-coloured plain, broken by the flat-topped hills. At last we stumbled along to the top of a ridge; and there, strange and delightful sight, away in the distance lay a green basin, trees, no mirage, but the valley of Sheshaoua.

Sheshaoua is a district ruled by a powerful governor, whose great kasbah lies somewhere about the centre, dominating a large village. The district is watered by a stream from the Atlas Mountains, which accounts for its fertility; for, except where irrigation is possible, there can be no cultivation in this sahara: wide ditches conduct the stream across the length and breadth of the province, resulting in a green ribbon upon the face of the plain, the fields being edged with little hard mud-banks, keeping the water evenly distributed over the surface when the crops need flooding.

To have lived upon sun-burn is to appreciate the colour green: the march lost its monotony and some of its heat, when green lay in front and came nearer with every stride. Two hours and a half were short: the end of that time found us riding between corn-fields, crossing streamlet after streamlet watering the vegetation, and at last jogging over real turf, instead of clattering on stones, which had made talking difficult for the last day or two; now the path was actually soft and earthy. A long string of camels kept pace with us for a time on a parallel trail; then a douar came into sight, afterwards two saint-houses and a ruined kasbah. That half of these castles are ruined is not to be wondered at, considering that they are mud-built, and that tribal disputes and invasions are interminable. Some of those same crumbling tapia walls which we passed supported immense earthen jars, standing out against the sky--jars which are stored with corn or butter, and sealed up: nine months' old butter has the reputation of an old wine.

Shady trees, standing for the most part by the stream, hung over our path, but would have made damp camping-grounds, and we rode on through a marsh, up one ridge, down the opposite side, and at last into the principal village of Sheshaoua, not far from which, on a hillside to the north-east, lay one of the familiar country market-places, with its collection of little shelters for the sellers, its upright branches on which to hang meat--Thursday's market this. A ruined, red-walled kasbah faced it, apparently inhabited by storks alone, busy building their great rough nests: some were in the village.

Sheshaoua was no douar, but a high-walled collection of houses, overlooked by the modern kasbah on the hill. Thither we rode, up the steep slope, to call on the kaid, Sekassam Belcady, and ask permission to pitch the tents in one of the gardens which fringed the stream below. This the khaylifa granted at once , pressing on us the alternative of putting up inside the kasbah itself; but the open air had stronger attractions, and we wound our way downhill to the stream, on the other side of which the kaid's own garden lay. There being no bridge, the stream deep, and the banks steep, the mules were driven over by themselves, and R. and I followed one by one on Omar's back--on and into a natural garden fit for the gods, one of Nature's own parterres, and a paradise at that.

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