actual - DSpace@GIPE

INTO THE LA.ND OF THE MOORS. 11
tom is to avoid for the most part the towns and encamp in suitable
locations near the main roads. The latter are merely rough
tracks, from two to six or eight of them side by side, sometimes
deeply worn by much travel and not always following the most
direct routes. So far the country had been very thinly settled and
all but bare of vegetation other than the remnants of crops which
had been already gatbered.
The following day we rose early, breakfasted, packed and loaded
the mules and were off about half-past seven, a crowd of Arabs
from the neighboring village looking curiously on, the men and
boys from quite near, the women from a distance. At first the
road led over a very rough stony district, supporting little more
than palmettos, ferns and grassy scrub. Then we entered upon a
more pleasing region, passing fields in which many larks were singing,
and enjoying occasional views of the neighbaring Atlantic.
The road, too, began to be more enlivened. There were fat but
not old men riding on donkeys and poor women and children toiling
along on foot. Occasionally appeared a woman on a donkey
and clothed all in white, her eyes only being uncovered. Two
postmen bearing letters in straw baskets upon their heads passed
by. Most of the men oarriod the long flint matchlocks, which are
manufactured in Tetuan, a town east of Tangier, and with which
all my readers are familiar through pictures and photographs of
this country. The Moors are fond of shooting and are fair marksmen
at game upon the ground but they do not succeed well with
that upon the wing.
Besides the small villages of stone or mud houses, were others
of tents, tbe lower part of reeds and the cover of dark cloth made
of camels' hair and Palmyra-p&lm roots. They are not above six
feet in height at the apex and bear a most funereal aspect. We
passed orchards of fig-trees inclosed by hedges of tbe prickly pear
-an impenetrable fence-and bearing a not unsavory fruit. Or088-
ing two small streams, the largest perhaps three hundred feet wide,
and at tbis the dry season of tbe year, not more than two feet in
depth, we soon after arrived upon a ridge from which we had a
good view of the town of Arzilla, situated on a point of land jutting
into tbe ocean. It is a walled town built originally by the POl"­
tuguese, but has fallen into great decay. We gradually descended
to the shores of the ocean, upon which was' beating a thunderona
surf of much grandeur and beauty, and found our camp established
near a well on sloping ground back of the town. While we