And the companion before the road."

_Moorish Proverb._


Few countries afford a better insight into typical Mohammedan life, or
boast a more primitive civilization, than Morocco, preserved as it
has been so long from western contamination. The patriarchal system,
rendered more or less familiar to us by our Bibles, still exists in
the homes of its people, especially those of the country-side; but
Moorish city life is no less interesting or instructive. If an
Englishman's house is his castle, the Mohammedan's house is a
prison--not for himself, but for his women. Here is the radical
difference between their life and ours. No one who has not mixed
intimately with the people as one of themselves, lodging in their
houses and holding constant intercourse with them, can form an
adequate idea of the lack of home feeling, even in the happiest
families.

The moment you enter a town, however, the main facts are brought
vividly before you on every hand. You pass along a narrow
thoroughfare--maybe six, maybe sixteen feet in width--bounded by
almost blank walls, in some towns whitewashed, in others bare mud, in
which are no windows, lest their inmates might see or be seen. Even
above the roofs of the majority of two-storied houses (for very many
in the East consist but of ground floor), the wall is continued to
form a parapet round the terrace. If you meet a woman in the street,
she is enveloped from head to ankle in close disguise, with only a
peep-hole for one or both eyes, unless too ugly and withered for such
precautions to be needful.