Manchester cottons--from all these hundreds of unknown and unknowable
people, bound together by secret affinities, or intriguing against each
other with secret hate, there emanates an atmosphere of mystery and
menace more stifling than the smell of camels and spices and black
bodies and smoking fry which hangs like a fog under the close roofing of
the _souks_.

And suddenly one leaves the crowd and the turbid air for one of those
quiet corners that are like the back-waters of the bazaars, a small
square where a vine stretches across a shop-front and hangs ripe
clusters of grapes through the reeds. In the patterning of grape-shadows
a very old donkey, tethered to a stone-post, dozes under a pack-saddle
that is never taken off; and near by, in a matted niche, sits a very old
man in white. This is the chief of the Guild of "morocco" workers of
Marrakech, the most accomplished craftsman in Morocco in the preparing
and using of the skins to which the city gives its name. Of these sleek
moroccos, cream-white or dyed with cochineal or pomegranate skins, are
made the rich bags of the Chleuh dancing-boys, the embroidered slippers
for the harem, the belts and harnesses that figure so largely in
Moroccan trade--and of the finest, in old days, were made the
pomegranate-red morocco bindings of European bibliophiles.

From this peaceful corner one passes into the barbaric splendor of a
_souk_ hung with innumerable plumy bunches of floss silk--skeins of
citron yellow, crimson, grasshopper green and pure purple. This is the
silk-spinners' quarter, and next to it comes that of the dyers, with
great seething vats into which the raw silk is plunged, and ropes
overhead where the rainbow masses are hung out to dry.

Another turn leads into the street of the metal-workers and armourers,