On nights like these and through streets not greatly different, Harun al Raschid fared abroad in Baghdad and lighted upon the wonderful folk who live for all time in the pages of the Arabian Nights.  Doubtless I passed some twentieth-century descendants of the fisher-folk, the Calendars, the slaves, and the merchants who move in their wonderful pageantry along the glittering road of the “Thousand Nights and a Night,”—­the type is marvellously unchanging in Al Moghreb; but, alas, they spoke, if at all, to deaf ears, and Salam was ever more anxious to see me safely home than to set out in search of adventure.  By day I knew that Djedida had little of the charm associated even in this year of grace with the famous city on the Tigris, but, all over the world that proclaims the inspiration of Mohammed, the old times come back by night, and then “a thousand years are but as yesterday.”

Happily we were right below the area of rebellion.  In the north, round Fez and Taza, there was severe fighting, spreading thence to the Riff country.  Here, people did no more than curse the Pretender in public or the Sultan in private, according to the state of their personal feelings.  Communication with the south, said the Maalem, was uninterrupted; only in the north were the sons of the Illegitimate, the rebels against Allah, troubling Our Lord the Sultan.  From Djedida down to the Atlas the tribes were peaceful, and would remain at rest unless Our Master should attempt to collect his taxes, in which case, without doubt, there would be trouble.

[Illustration:  A VERANDAH AT MAZAGAN]

He was a busy man in these days, was the Maalem.  When he was not baking bread or smoking kief he was securing mules and bringing them for our inspection.  To Mr. T. Spinney, son of the British Vice-Consul in Mazagan, we owed our salvation.  A master of Moghrebbin Arabic, on intimate terms with the Moors, and thoroughly conversant with the road and its requirements, he stood between me and the fiery-tongued Maalem.  This mule was rejected, that saddle was returned, stirrups tied with string were disqualified, the little man’s claim to have all “the money in the hand” was overruled, and the Maalem, red-hot sputtering iron in my hands, was as wax in Mr. Spinney’s.  My good friend and host also found Kaid M’Barak,[7] the soldier, a tall, scorched, imperturbable warrior, who rode a brave horse, and carried a gun done up in a very tattered, old, flannel case tied with half a dozen pieces of string.  The kaid’s business was to strike terror into the hearts of evil men in return for a Moorish dollar a day, and to help with tent setting and striking, or anything else that might be required, in return for his food.  He was a lean, gaunt, taciturn man, to whom twelve hours in the saddle brought no discomfort, and though he strove earnestly to rob me, it was only at the journey’s end, when he had done his work faithfully and well.  His gun seemed to be a constant source of danger to