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.
By this time the camel and attendants had been overtaken and left far behind, and since we had passed our heavy baggage no other forms of life seemed to be travelling along the same trail as our own: certainly a countryman joined himself to us, partly to point out our direction, partly for the sake of company; he held his stick behind his shoulders and stepped out well, but not for long. And after he had left we only saw a few women in the distance. These were often on donkeys, and some carried water-pots on their heads; but not one of them was "a beast of burden" in the sense of the women round Tetuan—not one crouched under an overpowering load of faggots or charcoal.
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.
Not far from this spot we came upon Sok-el-Had (the Sunday Market)—that is, a place where every Sunday a country market is held, and to which the whole countryside flocks to do its marketing. This was Tuesday, and therefore Sok-el-Had was forlorn and deserted, its rows of little mud huts and its meat-hangers empty, not a soul within miles. They are as old as Morocco, these places known by the name of the week-day on which the market is held—places so strangely deserted upon any other day.
Still we rode on for several hours, past Sheikh Boujiman Ben Hamed's white house, while the sun blazed on the bare path, and the argans stood too far apart to cast consecutive shade. It was with much satisfaction that we saw our next camping-ground in the distance about one o'clock: we had started early, and a long lazy afternoon was a good prospect. Sok-el-Tleta is named once more after its market—Tuesday Market. Even as Sok-el-Had was forlorn, so Sok-el-Tleta in proportion teemed with life. Held on the open hillside, upon a great bare space worn brown by cycles of Tuesday markets, the prevailing colour brown and white, hundreds of mules, hundreds of Arabs, the sight was one not to be forgotten.
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.
