In Morocco

ep an eye on the pirates of Salé. But Chella has fallen like a Babylonian city triumphed over by the prophets; while

nclosing them faces the city wall of Rabat, looking at it across one of those great red powdery wastes which

amels, and by the busy motors of the French administration; yet there emanates from it an impression of solitude and decay which

nds the thin veil of the European Illusion, and confronts one with the old grey Moslem reality. Passing under the gate of Chel

w where a little blue-green minaret gleams through fig-trees, and f

ing in the dust. Close by women and children splash and chatter about the spring, and the dome of a saint's tomb shines through lustreless leaves. The black man, the donkeys, the women and children,

at would even their beauty be without the leafy setting of the place? The "unimaginable touch of Time" gives Chella its peculiar charm: the aged fig-tree clamped in uptorn tiles and thrusting gouty arms between the arches; the garlanding o

enery and coolness in the hollow of a fierce red hill make Chella seem, to the traveller new to Africa, the very type and embo

d-el-Moumen, had been occupied with conquest and civic administration. It was said of his rule that "he seized northern Africa to make order prevail there"; and in fact, out of a welter of wild tribes confusedly fighting and robb

photograph from the Se

a

ruins o

he north of Spain, dreamed a great dream of art. His ambition was to bestow on his three capitals, Seville, Rabat and Marrakech, the three most beautiful towers the wo

its height, it stands on the edge of the cliff, a far-off beacon to travellers by land and sea. It is one of the world's great monuments, so sufficient in strength and majesty that until one has se

he sky. This mosque, before it was destroyed, must have been one of the finest monuments of Almohad architecture in Morocco: now,

nd complete as that of some mediaeval Tuscan city. All they need to make the comparison exact is that they should have been compactly m

larcos, "The Camp of Victory" (Ribat-el-Path), and the monuments he bestowed on it justifi