pomegranate gardens and white terraces, pass thence to one of the feudal
fortresses near the snows, where for half the year the great chiefs of
the south live in their clan, among fighting men and falconers and packs
of _sloughis_. And still others grow up in a stifling Mellah, trip
unveiled on its blue terraces overlooking the gardens of the great, and,
seen one day at sunset by a fat vizier or his pale young master, are
acquired for a handsome sum and transferred to the painted sepulchre of
the harem.

Worst of all must be the fate of those who go from tents and cedar
forests, or from some sea-blown garden above Rabat, into one of the
houses of Old Fez. They are well-nigh impenetrable, these palaces of
Elbali; the Fazi dignitaries do not welcome the visits of strange women.
On the rare occasions when they are received, a member of the family
(one of the sons, or a brother-in-law who has "studied in Algeria")
usually acts as interpreter; and perhaps it is as well that no one from
the outer world should come to remind these listless creatures that
somewhere the gulls dance on the Atlantic and the wind murmurs through
olive-yards and clatters the metallic fronds of palm-groves.

We had been invited, one day, to visit the harem of one of the chief
dignitaries of the Makhzen at Fez, and these thoughts came to me as I
sat among the pale women in their mouldering prison. The descent through
the steep tunnelled streets gave one the sense of being lowered into the
shaft of a mine. At each step the strip of sky grew narrower, and was
more often obscured by the low vaulted passages into which we plunged.
The noises of the Bazaar had died out, and only the sound of fountains
behind garden walls and the clatter of our mules' hoofs on the stones
went with us. Then fountains and gardens ceased also, the towering
masonry closed in, and we entered an almost subterranean labyrinth which