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 Saïd laid their two guns under a tree (they rode with them across their knees, ancient flint-locks, and carried bullets in bags at their sides, Omar possessing a French rifle as well); 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 Khayyām; but there were no stars.
Our Camp at Ain-el-Hadger.
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 fête 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 (particularly a white with flowing mane and tail, and two iron-greys), 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 (to be great is to be fat, in Morocco), 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.
By this time the camp was scattered: the camel had risen from its knees and paced off under its medley load some time before, attended by Mulai Ombach, Mohammed, and the donkey.
The Ain-el-Hadger guard had each received a trifle for his night's services; Saïd 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.
