A WELL IN THE GARDEN NEAR WAZZAN
THE SACRED CITY OF WAZZAN
True, these two emperors trace their ancestry back to the same sacred source; but many true believers call his Turkish majesty a renegade and backslider, while the family-tree of the Moorish Sultan has been so bent and twisted, and its branches have been so rudely hacked and broken by revolutions, wars, and crimes that a majority of his subjects look askance upon his pretensions as Commander of the Faithful. Many of them secretly, some openly, acknowledge the Shareef of Wazzan not only as the spiritual head of the Empire, but also as its rightful temporal lord. Fortunately for the internal peace of the land the Shareefs have been content to exercise imperial power by suggestion, to receive tithes in lieu of taxes, and to leave to the Sultan and his ministers at Fez the vexatious details of the government and the semblance of absolute authority. So sacred is this city of Wazzan, so fanatical are its inhabitants, that we dared not enter its gates until a military escort sent by the Shareef came to conduct us to the home assigned us as a residence by that sainted potentate.
THE MARKET-PLACE
THE MARKET-PLACE
It cost our servants several hours' labor to clean the mansion and make it habitable. In the meantime, with Haj as interpreter and Kaid Lharbi to lend dignity to our party, we were escorted by a half-dozen ragged soldiers to the Shareef's palace, which gleams white in the midst of green gardens. There we were received with high-bred dignity and more than ordinary cordiality by the man who, as has been said, is revered, from Morocco to Madras, as the holiest and greatest representative of Islamism.