Moreover, at the time when this journey was made, Bu Hamara was holding
the approaches to Fez, and neither Mequinez nor Wazzan was in a mood to
receive strangers.
So it falls out that the record of some two or three hundred miles of
inland travel is all that awaits the reader here. In time to come, when
Morocco has been purged of its offences of simplicity and primitiveness,
the tourist shall accomplish in forty-eight hours the journey that
demanded more than a month of last year's spring. For Sunset Land has no
railway lines, nor can it boast--beyond the narrow limits of
Tangier--telegraphs, telephones, electric light, modern hotels, or any of
the other delights upon which the pampered traveller depends. It is as a
primeval forest in the hour before the dawn. When the sun of France
penetrates pacifically to all its hidden places, the forest will wake to a
new life. Strange birds of bright plumage, called in Europe _gens
d'armes_, will displace the storks upon the battlements of its ancient
towns, the _commis voyageur_ will appear where wild boar and hyaena now
travel in comparative peace, the wild cat (_felis Throgmortonensis_) will
arise from all mineralised districts.
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