giving it the beauty that lives when battles are forgotten.




II


VOLUBILIS, MOULAY IDRISS AND MEKNEZ


I

VOLUBILIS

One day before sunrise we set out from Rabat for the ruins of Roman
Volubilis.

From the ferry of the Bou-Regreg we looked backward on a last vision of
orange ramparts under a night-blue sky sprinkled with stars; ahead, over
gardens still deep in shadow, the walls of Salé were passing from drab
to peach-colour in the eastern glow. Dawn is the romantic hour in
Africa. Dirt and dilapidation disappear under a pearly haze, and a
breeze from the sea blows away the memory of fetid markets and sordid
heaps of humanity. At that hour the old Moroccan cities look like the
ivory citadels in a Persian miniature, and the fat shopkeepers riding
out to their vegetable-gardens like Princes sallying forth to rescue
captive maidens.

Our way led along the highroad from Rabat to the modern port of Kenitra,