The slender desert-horse, the habb-er-reeh (gust of wind, as they call him), with the small aristocratic head, a nose which will go into a tea-cup, perfect shoulders, and diminutive sloping hindquarters, is seldom met with and hardly ever used, except quite in the south of the country, where he is given camel's milk to drink.
People as a rule start off on their day's march with the dawn, after a light breakfast of coffee, beaten-up eggs, and dry biscuits; halt about ten o'clock, supposing they are near water; and, if necessary, do two or three hours more, comfortably, before sunset. But we had made a late start, and the sun was far up as we jogged along one after the other, leaving behind the sands, the orange gardens, and the gimcrack Spanish houses, at every step the open country widening in front of us.
We followed a narrow path, one of the countless footpaths which zigzag in and out, and wind away to every point of the compass, like ants' tracks from an ant-hill. Donkeys, mules, countrywomen, eternally pass and re-pass along the polished ways, with the everlasting burdens of charcoal, faggots, vegetables, and flour: life in some form moving along them there always is.
Towards the edge of the horizon, clumps of dwarf palm and coarse grass slanted in the breeze: here and there grey rocks stuck up on the hillside like fossilized bones, and met the blue sky. A stream was meandering, hidden under deep banks, on our right. We wound along the wide valley, doing our best to keep the mules going at a respectable pace, and finding that there was quite an art in accomplishing it on a hireling. Cadour cut in behind, and supplemented our sticks and heels with Arabic words of much effect, his own mule's mouth suffering badly from his jogging, remorseless hand.
Ourselves and Baggage.
A raven, "a blot in heaven, flying high," sailed over our heads up in the blue, and then, leisurely dropping, sat on a rock and croaked at us. Morocco is a country of circling kites and keen-eyed hawks, whose easy, buoyant flight and vibrating "hover" in the hot air are things of undying fascination. Now and again a puff of east wind—life-giving—would stir the whole countryside and pass on, leaving us glowing under a sun which warmed every cranny, and made the section of air just above the flat fields rock with heat. Two countrywomen toiled towards us under their bundles—a couple of figures swathed in yellowy white; they gazed at us as people gaze who have few interests in their lives, then smiled and spoke, gesticulated, and laughed again: a herd of goats was outlined on the hill above; the goat-herd called to another far-off brown-clad figure, and the echoes filtered down to us: a rabbit dashed up out of a palm-bush and scuttled away: and then there was silence profound, and we paced on eastwards, talking and singing a song sometimes, while the sun climbed right-handed.
There is no life like it—that life of the open air and its absolute freedom. Monotonous it would certainly be to many people: small and uneventful matters, and a palette set in greys and browns, charm but a few, for whom solitary rides and waste places are "things in common," and chance meetings and little incidents by the way suffice.
Two or three miles outside Tangier stretch rich undulating lands between low hills: a few divisionless fields bear witness to both primitive and erratic farming, and give that regretful air to the landscape which land not "done well by" always imparts.
The writer has lately read a somewhat pessimistic letter upon the state of Morocco. Morocco is a decadent empire, it is true: primarily, because the two races to whom the country belongs live, and have always lived from time immemorial, under a tribal system; and secondarily, because those same races, Arab and Berber, hate one another with a racial hatred. These two reasons by themselves augur badly for the land they live upon, implying a state of armed neutrality, no cohesion, and no settled peace.
