sand; but though Morocco possesses many oases it has no pure sand and
few palms. I remember it as a considerable event when I discovered one
from my lofty window at Bou-Jeloud.

The _bled_ is made of very different stuff from the sand-ocean of the
Sahara. The light plays few tricks with it. Its monotony is wearisome
rather than impressive, and the fact that it is seldom without some form
of dwarfish vegetation makes the transition less startling when the
alluvial green is finally reached. One had always half expected it, and
it does not spring at a djinn's wave out of sterile gold.

But the fact brings its own compensations. Moroccan oases differ one
from another far more than those of South Algeria and Tunisia. Some have
no palms, others but a few, others are real palm-oases, though even in
the south (at least on the hither side of the great Atlas) none spreads
out a dense uniform roofing of metal-blue fronds like the date-oases of
Biskra or Tozeur. As for Sefrou, which Foucauld called the most
beautiful oasis of Morocco, it is simply an extremely fertile valley
with vineyards and orchards stretching up to a fine background of
mountains. But the fact that it lies just below the Atlas makes it an
important market-place and centre of caravans.

Though so near Fez it is still almost on the disputed border between the
loyal and the "unsubmissive" tribes, those that are _Blad-Makhzen_ (of
the Sultan's government) and those that are against it. Until recently,
therefore, it has been inaccessible to visitors, and even now a strongly
fortified French post dominates the height above the town. Looking down
from the fort, one distinguishes, through masses of many-tinted green, a
suburb of Arab houses in gardens, and below, on the river, Sefrou
itself, a stout little walled town with angle-towers defiantly thrust