Saffi has been too often described to need more than the merest mention here. It is a strange, flat-roofed, white town, reaching from the sea-beach high up the semicircle of hills by which it is enclosed, the summit capped by the windowless walls and peaked towers of the great castle, once a palace of the Sultans, now little more than a deserted ruin.
Within the town the streets are narrow and dirty. In rainy seasons the mud is almost knee-deep, and a torrent flows through the main street. The native inhabitants are poor, and accordingly but little signs of luxury or trade are to be found, with the exceptions of the large stores of the few European merchants who reside there. The town is walled, in parts of Moorish workmanship, in others the remains of the old Portuguese occupation; for Saffi, like most of the other towns of the Atlantic coast of Morocco, once formed a small colony of the “King of the Algarves.”
The few days I spent at Saffi passed pleasantly enough, for I was entertained by Mr Hunot, her Majesty’s Vice-Consul, whose knowledge of Arabic and Morocco, gained from a residence of some forty years in the country, is exceptional; and though I chafed at the delays that always meet one in dealing with Moors, he did much to render my time as agreeable as could be to a man who was intent upon nothing but in making a start.
Small as my preparations were, they caused me several days’ more delay than I liked; but before the week was out I found myself on the eve of departure, with a couple of mules, an old man who was to be my guide, philosopher, and friend, his son and his nephew, a black slave-girl belonging to his establishment, a stray Sahara pilgrim, and my Riffi servant.
Adopting the dress of the country on my departure, and mounting a pack-mule on the top of the luggage, we set out one morning, not at sunrise as I had hoped, for the old man forgot everything that he could forget, and remembered an enormous quantity of things he should have left behind, and it was near mid-day before we passed out under the old gateway of the town and climbed the steep hill, in the valley below which the only gardens that Saffi can boast are situated.
The heat was intense and water scarce, and both we and our poor animals suffered the entire road to Marakesh, or, as it is more commonly called, Morocco City, a distance of about a hundred miles. There had been no rain for some five months, and even the metafir, as the natives call their underground cisterns, were nearly dry, and many quite so.
The road from Saffi to Marakesh presents no aspect of peculiar interest. The tribes of Abda and Beled Ahmar are passed through, the latter boasting the dreary circular salt lake of Zima, near which is a cluster of white buildings, a mdarsa or sort of college, where the late Sultan and many of his sons received their education. The inhabitants are all Arabs, but their villages are few and far between, or lie off the road. The country, at this time of year a dreary stony waste, is in the spring one great field of waving corn; and the horses of Beled Ahmar are famous. Owing to the heat, we did not arrive at Morocco City until the fourth day, and did not actually enter until the morning of the fifth, preferring to spend the night just outside the walls.
There is one scene, however, that presents itself as one nears the city that cannot be passed over without mention, though I myself, amongst others, have described it before. Yet so strikingly grand is it, and so unique, that it demands reference in any work that deals with this portion of Morocco. I refer to the first view of the wide valley of the Tensift, with its wonderful background of the range of the Atlas Mountains.
We had been climbing the steep slopes of Jibeelet, the name given to the range of hills that form the north boundary of the wide valley of the Tensift, for some little time before the plain beneath came into view. The ascent had been a hot and tiring one,
