will reveal fresh traces of Roman and Phenician occupation; the remote
affinities between Copts and Berbers, between Bagdad and Fez, between
Byzantine art and the architecture of the Souss, will be explored and
elucidated, but, while these successive discoveries are being made, the
strange survival of mediaeval life, of a life contemporary with the
crusaders, with Saladin, even with the great days of the Caliphate of
Bagdad, which now greets the astonished traveller, will gradually
disappear, till at last even the mysterious autocthones of the Atlas
will have folded their tents and silently stolen away.


II

Authoritative utterances on Morocco are not wanting for those who can
read them in French, but they are to be found mainly in large and often
inaccessible books, like M. Doutté's "En Tribu," the Marquis de
Segonzac's remarkable explorations in the Atlas, or Foucauld's classic
(but unobtainable) "Reconnaissance au Maroc", and few, if any, have been
translated into English.

M. Louis Châtelain has dealt with the Roman ruins of Volubilis and M.
Tranchant de Lunel, M. Raymond Koechlin, M. Gaillard, M. Ricard, and
many other French scholars, have written of Moslem architecture and art
in articles published either in "France-Maroc," as introductions to
catalogues of exhibitions, or in the reviews and daily papers. Pierre
Loti and M. André Chevrillon have reflected, with the intensest visual
sensibility, the romantic and ruinous Morocco of yesterday, and in the
volumes of the "Conférences Marocaines," published by the French
government, the experts gathered about the Resident-General have
examined the industrial and agricultural Morocco of tomorrow. Lastly,