No Moor will harm a stork.  Even Moorish children, whose taste for destruction and slaughter is as highly developed as any European’s, will pick up a young stork that has fallen from its nest and return it to the mother bird if they can.  Storks sit at peace among the women of the hareem who come for their afternoon airing to the flat roof-tops of Moorish houses.  Moorish lovers in the streets below tell the story of their hopes and fears to the favoured bird, who, when he is chattering with his mandibles, is doing what he can to convey the message.  Every True Believer knows that the stork was once a Sultan, or a Grand Wazeer at least, who, being vain and irreligious, laughed in the beards of the old men of his city on a sacred day when they came to pay their respects to him.  By so doing he roused the wrath of Allah, who changed him suddenly to his present form.  But in spite of misdeeds, the Moors love the stately bird, and there are hospitals for storks in Fez and Marrakesh, where men whose sanctity surpasses their ignorance are paid to minister to the wants of the sick or injured among them.  Many a time Salam, in pursuit of birds, has passed within a few-yards of the father of the red legs or his children, but it has never occurred to him to do them harm.  Strange fact, but undeniable, that in great cities of the East, where Muslims and Christians dwell, the storks will go to the quarter occupied by True Believers, and leave the other districts severely alone.  I have been assured by Moors that the first of these birds having been a Muslim, the storks recognise the True Faith, and wish to testify to their preference for it.  It is hard to persuade a Moor to catch a stork or take an egg from the nest, though in pursuit of other birds and beasts he is a stranger to compunction in any form.

One of the trackers gave me his horse, and Pepe Ratto led the way down the stream for a short distance and then into thick scrub that seemed to be part of wild life’s natural sanctuary, so quiet it lay, so dense and undisturbed.  After the first five minutes I was conscious of the forest in an aspect hitherto unknown to me; I was aware that only a man who knew the place intimately could venture to make a path through untrodden growths that were left in peace from year to year.  It was no haphazard way, though bushes required careful watching, the double-thorned lotus being too common for comfort.

[Illustration:  A NIGHT SCENE, MOGADOR]

My companion’s eye, trained to the observation of the woodlands in every aspect, noted the stories told by the bushes, the gravel, and the sand with a rapidity that was amazing.  Twenty-five years of tireless hunting have given Pepe Ratto an instinct that seems to supplement the ordinary human gifts of sight and hearing.  Our forefathers, who hunted for their living, must have had this gift so developed, and while lying dormant in Europeans, whose range of sports is compassed by the life of cities and limited