One of the few peaceful camping-grounds between Marrakesh and Mazagan was at a little distance outside an Arab village of about thirty little pointed thatched huts, enclosed within a zareba of thorn-bushes: it was called Smeera.
We camped near some trees and water: the fig-trees were full of crows, which came in to roost in thousands, and The Little Owl (Athene noctua) haunted the place. In the early half-light of the morning this wise-looking little bird was found, when we awoke, to be sitting upon the edge of the flap of the tent in the doorway, gazing in upon us with round yellow eyes; nor was it the least nervous.
I recollect how, the evening before, there sat outside Smeera, as so often may be seen outside the like villages, away beyond the huts and the zareba, where it was very quiet, upon some flat grey stones, eight or twelve village men—Arabs. Sitting there in the sunset, wrapped in their white hooded mantles, this conclave of wise white owls, easily to be mistaken for grey stones, so rigid are their backs—of what do they talk as the hours go by? There is no joke nor song nor a drop of liquor going, as in a "public," where our labourers at home would naturally congregate. But this charmed circle sits on, staring into the west: the tall bearded wheat rustles in the wind close to them; the illimitable plain stretches away to the horizon, flat as their own uneventful lives; the sun drops behind the soft straight line of Earth; they do not move,—wondrous picturesque figures, long white folds, peaked hoods, sitting, their knees drawn up to their chins, for how long? What is time to an Arab?
One evening our camel never turned up, and we fully expected to have had to sleep without beds or any other of the night's usual adjuncts. We had started that morning at seven, had ridden till twelve, had halted for an hour and a half, starting again at half-past one, and riding till half-past five; and all the way, after a mile out of Sok-el-Tleta, where we watered the mules at a pond and the trail forked, we were on the wrong road.
Only the man with the camel knew the Mazagan line of march thoroughly well: he had explained it beforehand to Omar. Omar made a mistake, and the camel and attendants were behind ourselves. However, news travels oddly fast in uncivilized countries, and the camel-driver heard after a time that the "advance squadron" was on the wrong trail. He set out after us, and ran and walked, and caught us at three o'clock in the afternoon. The wretched camel followed his steps all the way, with Mulai Ombach in charge of our baggage, three donkeys, and a boy, who were afraid of being cut off from us, and dared not risk a night by themselves. The camel-driver put us right, Omar and Saïd were well cursed, and we began a toilsome journey across rough country, hoping to hit the right trail in time.
We found ourselves in the wildest and dirtiest of Arab encampments now and again, where infuriated dogs, unaccustomed to visitors, rushed out and almost bit us upon our mules, amidst a hail of stones from Omar and Saïd. A valley luxuriating knee-deep in flowers—the Flower Valley we called it—was the one redeeming feature of that march. There are certain times for seeing the wild flowers in Morocco—perhaps April in the south is the best month: so far we had not been as much struck by them as report would lead one to expect. And yet they were most beautiful. Picture corn-fields full of love-in-a-mist; orchards of fig-trees, with the grass ablaze with golden pyrethrums; red mallow standing up in the barley; the ground carpeted with blue-and-white convolvulus; masses of carmine-coloured convolvulus densely festooned over the thorn-hedges; on the barest, stoniest of soil stretches of cistus, pale pink to faded mauve; asphodels everywhere; sometimes the wild spring form of the cultivated artichoke, the small variety of the ice-plant, the larkspur, the lupin, and several varieties of lavender. All these we met with, over and over again: rarer plants were to be found for the looking. R. collected specimens of them all, to be classified by the authorities at Kew Gardens on our return.
The Flower Valley yielded one or two which we had not seen before, and we would have lingered there, but that time was precious and we had no notion of our exact whereabouts. It was a case of going on and on and meeting no one: evening began to draw near, and still we were off the right track, while our baggage might be anywhere. There was nothing for it but to push forward and trust to luck: in time we cut into innumerable little paths, which snaked side by side in the same direction across the plain, pointing towards the coast, and these we surmised to be the trail to Mazagan, which proved to be correct. But at that moment, though we were anything but certain, it had become absolutely necessary to halt for the night. It was dark, and the mules were done. An Arab village lay on a hillside not far off, and we made for it.
Omar and Saïd had with them on their mules our tent and two or three necessaries for cooking: we had therefore a roof over our heads, and in time a fire was made, odds and ends were scraped up, and we ate a meal of sorts sitting on the ground beside a candle stuck on a stone. The night grew very cold: there was, however, a bit of thin carpet, which we proposed to wrap ourselves in to sleep. Now and then one of us looked out between the flaps of the tent into the darkness and watched—a case of "Sister Ann! Sister Ann! do you see any one coming?"
One of Our Last Camps. Loading the Camel.