Resident General. Such unforeseen aspects, in this mysterious city, do
the most ordinary domestic functions wear.



III

THE BAZAARS

Passing out of the enchanted circle of the Bahia it is startling to
plunge into the native life about its gates.

Marrakech is the great market of the south, and the south means not only
the Atlas with its feudal chiefs and their wild clansmen, but all that
lies beyond of heat and savagery, the Sahara of the veiled Touaregs,
Dakka, Timbuctoo, Senegal and the Soudan. Here come the camel caravans
from Demnat and Tameslout, from the Moulouya and the Souss, and those
from the Atlantic ports and the confines of Algeria. The population of
this old city of the southern march has always been even more mixed than
that of the northerly Moroccan towns. It is made up of the descendants
of all the peoples conquered by a long line of Sultans who brought their
trains of captives across the sea from Moorish Spain and across the
Sahara from Timbuctoo. Even in the highly cultivated region on the lower
slopes of the Atlas there are groups of varied ethnic origin, the
descendants of tribes transplanted by long-gone rulers and still
preserving many of their original characteristics.

In the bazaars all these peoples meet and mingle: cattle-dealers,
olive-growers, peasants from the Atlas, the Souss and the Draa, Blue Men
of the Sahara, blacks from Senegal and the Soudan, coming in to trade