Outside the market-place a country Moor of the middle class is in charge of four young boy slaves, and is telling a friend what he paid for them.  I learn that their price averaged eleven pounds apiece in English currency—­two hundred and eighty dollars altogether in Moorish money, that they were all bred in Marrakesh by a dealer who keeps a large establishment of slaves, as one in England might keep a stud farm, and sells the children as they grow up.  The purchaser of the quartette is going to take them to the North.  He will pass the coming night in a fandak, and leave as soon after daybreak as the gates are opened.  Some ten days’ travel on foot will bring him to a certain city, where his merchandise should fetch four hundred dollars.  The lads do not seem to be disturbed by the sale, or by thoughts of their future, and the dealer himself seems to be as near an approach to a commercial traveller as I have seen in Morocco.  To him the whole transaction is on a par with selling eggs or fruit, and while he does not resent my interest, he does not pretend to understand it.

From the minaret that overlooks the mosque the mueddin calls for the evening prayer; from the side of the Kutubia Tower and the minaret of Sidi bel Abbas, as from all the lesser mosques, the cry is taken up.  Lepers pass out of the city on their way to Elhara; beggars shuffle off to their dens; storks standing on the flat house-tops survey the familiar scene gravely but with interest.  Doubtless the dilals and all who sent their slaves to the market to be sold this afternoon will respond to the mueddins’ summons with grateful hearts, and Sidi bel Abbas, patron saint of Red Marrakesh, will hardly go unthanked.

GREEN TEA AND POLITICS

[Illustration:  ON THE HOUSE-TOP, MARRAKESH]

CHAPTER VIII

GREEN TEA AND POLITICS

    Whither resorting from the vernal Heat
    Shall Old Acquaintance Old Acquaintance greet,
      Under the Branch that leans above the Wall
    To shed his Blossom over head and feet.

    The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

He was a grave personable Moor of middle age, and full of the dignity that would seem to be the birthright of his race.  His official position gave him a certain knowledge of political developments without affecting his serene outlook upon life.  Whether he sat outside the Kasbah of his native town and administered the law according to his lights, or, summoned to the capital, rode attended so far as the Dar el Makhzan, there to take his part in a council of the Sultan’s advisers, or whether, removed for a time from cares of office, he rested at ease among his cushions as he was doing now, this Moorish gentleman’s placid and unruffled features would lead the Western observer to suppose that he was a very simple person with no sort of interest in affairs.  I had occasion to