pavement made in the finely patterned mosaic work of Fez; and the long
terrace walk trellised with "vines and other greens" leading from the
palace to the famous stables, and over which it was the Sultan's custom
to drive in a chariot drawn by women and eunuchs.

Moulay-Ismaël received the English ambassador with every show of pomp
and friendship, and immediately "made him a present" of a handful of
young English captives; but just as the negotiations were about to be
concluded Commodore Stewart was privately advised that the Sultan had no
intention of allowing the rest of the English to be ransomed. Luckily a
diplomatically composed letter, addressed by the English envoy to one of
the favorite wives, resulted in Ismaël's changing his mind, and the
captives were finally given up, and departed with their rescuers. As one
stands in the fiery sun, among the monstrous ruins of those tragic
walls, one pictures the other Christian captives pausing for a second,
at the risk of death, in the rhythmic beat of their labor, to watch the
little train of their companions winding away across the desert to
freedom.

On the way back through the long streets that lead to the ruins we
noticed, lying by the roadside, the shafts of fluted columns, blocks of
marble, Roman capitals: fragments of the long loot of Salé and
Volubilis. We asked how they came there, and were told that, according
to a tradition still believed in the country, when the prisoners and
captives who were dragging the building materials toward the palace
under the blistering sun heard of the old Sultan's death, they dropped
their loads with one accord and fled. At the same moment every worker on
the walls flung down his trowel or hod, every slave of the palaces
stopped grinding or scouring or drawing water or carrying faggots or
polishing the miles of tessellated floors, so that, when the tyrant's