Kaid M'Barak dozed on one of the
boxes, nursing his beloved gun, while the horse equally dear to him stood
quietly by, enjoying the lush grasses. Salam and the tracker were not far
away, a rendezvous was appointed for the hunt, and Pepe Ratto, followed by
his men, cantered off, leaving me to a delightful spell of rest, while
Salam persuaded the muleteers to load the animals for the last few miles
of the road between us and Mogador.
Then, not without regret, I followed the pack-mules out of the valley,
along the track leading to a broad path that has been worn by the feet of
countless nomads, travelling with their flocks and herds, from the heat
and drought of the extreme south to the markets that receive the trade of
the country, or making haste from the turbulent north to escape the heavy
hand of the oppressor.
It was not pleasant to ride away from the forest, to see the great open
spaces increasing and the trees yielding slowly but surely to the dwarf
bushes that are the most significant feature of the southern country,
outside the woodland and oases. I thought of the seaport town we were so
soon to see--a place where the civilisation we had dispensed with happily
enough for some weeks past would be forced into evidence once more, where
the wild countrymen among whom we had lived at our ease would be seen only
on market days, and the native Moors would have assimilated just enough of
the European life and thought to make them uninteresting, somewhat
vicious, and wholly ill-content.
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