When the
Court Elevated by Allah left Marrakesh for the north some years ago, the
sorely-tried natives had risen against their master, they had captured and
plundered his house, and he had been fortunate in getting away with a
whole skin. Thereafter the tribesmen had fought among themselves for the
spoils of war, the division of the china and cutlery accounting for
several deaths. All the land round our little camp had been a garden, a
place famous for roses and jessamine, verbena and the geraniums that grow
in bushes, together with countless other flowers, that make the garden of
Sunset Land suggest to Moors the beauties of the paradise that is to come.
Now the flowers that had been so carefully tended ran wild, the boar
rooted among them, and the porcupine made a home in their shade. As
evening closed in, the wreck of the great house became vague and shadowy,
a thing without outline, the wraith of the home that had been. Grey owls
and spectral bats sailed or fluttered from the walls. They might have been
past owners or servitors who had suffered metamorphosis. The sight set me
thinking of the mutual suspicions of the Bedouins and the Susi traders,
the raiding of Sidi el Muktar, the other signs of tribal fighting that had
been apparent on the road, the persecution of the Moor by his protected
fellow-subjects,--in short, the whole failure of the administration to
which the ruin that stood before me seemed to give fitting expression.
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