of the European Illusion, and confronts one with the old grey Moslem
reality. Passing under the gate of Chella, with its richly carved
corbels and lofty crenellated towers, one feels one's self thus
completely reabsorbed into the past.

Below the gate the ground slopes away, bare and blazing, to a hollow
where a little blue-green minaret gleams through fig-trees, and
fragments of arch and vaulting reveal the outline of a ruined mosque.

Was ever shade so blue-black and delicious as that of the cork-tree near
the spring where the donkey's water-cans are being filled? Under its
branches a black man in a blue shirt lies immovably sleeping 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, the saint's dome, are
all part of the inimitable Eastern scene in which inertia and agitation
are so curiously combined, and a surface of shrill noise flickers over
depths of such unfathomable silence.

The ruins of Chella belong to the purest period of Moroccan art. The
tracery of the broken arches is all carved in stone or in glazed
turquoise tiling, and the fragments of wall and vaulting have the firm
elegance of a classic ruin. But what 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 of vines flung
from column to column; the secret pool to which childless women are
brought to bathe, and where the tree springing from a cleft of the steps
is always hung with the bright bits of stuff which are the votive
offerings of Africa.