contrasts the transition from pious serenity to rapacious rage can
seldom have been more rapid. The devotees of the _marabout_ fought,
screamed, tore their garments and rolled over each other with sanguinary
gestures in the struggle for our pesetas; then, perceiving our
indifference, they suddenly remembered their religious duties, scrambled
to their feet, tucked up their flying draperies, and raced after the
tail-end of the procession.

Through a golden heat-haze we struggled on to the hills. The country was
fallow, and in great part too sandy for agriculture, but here and there
we came on one of the deep-set Moroccan rivers, with a reddish-yellow
course channelled between perpendicular banks of red earth, and marked
by a thin line of verdure that widened to fruit-gardens wherever a
village had sprung up. We traversed several of these "sedentary"[A]
villages, _nourwals_ of clay houses with thatched conical roofs, in
gardens of fig, apricot and pomegranate that must be so many pink and
white paradises after the winter rains.

[Footnote A: So called to distinguish them from the tent villages of the
less settled groups.]

One of these villages seemed to be inhabited entirely by blacks, big
friendly creatures who came out to tell us by which trail to reach the
bridge over the yellow _oued_. In the _oued_ their womenkind were
washing the variegated family rags. They were handsome blue-bronze
creatures, bare to the waist, with tight black astrakhan curls and
firmly sculptured legs and ankles; and all around them, like a swarm of
gnats, danced countless jolly pickaninnies, naked as lizards, with the
spindle legs and globular stomachs of children fed only on cereals.