CH. VI. CAMPING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 131 



but Marocco is large, and they are welcome to provide 

 for themselves ! ' It was then immediately decided to 

 camp out for the night; and the better to mark our 

 sense of the reception given us, it was at first proposed 

 to pitch our tents outside the walls. From this, how- 

 ever, we were dissuaded. In such a position, apparently 

 deprived of the protection of the local authorities, we 

 should certainly, it was said, be attacked by robbers, from 

 whom our Mogador escort might not prove a secure de- 

 fence. It was finally decided that our best course would 

 be to encamp in the great open space beside the chief 

 mosque and tower of the Koutoubia. Our men had been 

 ordered not to unload the baggage, so we were immedi- 

 ately under way. In the twilight the filth and abjectness 

 of all that met the eye were not so glaringly prominent as 

 before ; but as we rode through more streets and lanes and 

 open spaces, we saw no single building of the slightest pre- 

 tension, until we entered the great square, at the farther 

 end of which is the tower of the Koutoubia, the solitary 

 specimen of architecture of which the ancient capital can 

 boast. 



The daylight was fading fast, but enough remained to 

 show that the spot of our encampment was anything but in- 

 viting. Go where we would the ground was covered with 

 refuse of every kind, full of scorpion holes, and swarming with 

 insects, of which the most abundant and unsightly, though 

 the least mischievous, were very large black Coleoptera, 

 distant relatives of our European cockroaches, and the 

 whole space was bordered by a ditch or open drain that 

 reeked with foul exhalations. Meanwhile, we had sent the 

 captain of our escort with a message to Muley Hassan, 

 the Viceroy, informing him of our resolution to encamp in 

 our own tents, until a suitable house had been provided 

 for us. A civil answer was returned, expressing a wish 

 that we should not camp out, and saying that he had sent 

 orders to Ben Daoud immediately to provide us a suitable 

 residence. Soon after came a polite message from El 



K 2 



