CH. VI. CITY OF MAEOCCO. 133 



which many voices took part. When all was again quiet, 

 we ascertained the cause of the row. Ten soldiers sent by 

 Ben Daoud as a guard for the night had come to take 

 their places round the camp, when they found the ground 

 already occupied. El Graoui's men warned them off, 

 telling them they had no business there, and when the 

 others insisted on remaining to carry out their master's 

 orders the first comers threatened to thrash them if they 

 did not immediately depart. Peace was re-established 

 when Ben Daoud's men retired to the farther end of the 

 square behind the great mosque. 



When we came to talk over the varied experiences of 

 the day, we first of all agreed that, old travellers as we all 

 were, and familiar with the squalor of Oriental cities, we 

 none of us had ever known, or even imagined, the exist- 

 ence of a large town so expressive of human degradation, 

 so utterly foul and repulsive, as this wherein we found our- 

 selves. Of all the places commonly visited by travellers 

 Jerusalem is perhaps that which at the first moment ap- 

 proaches nearest to the same impression ; but, not to speak 

 of the numerous important buildings and the associations 

 connected with them, nor yet of the modern structures 

 that have arisen during the last half- century, the poorest 

 quarters of Jerusalem are far from rivalling the universal 

 squalor and hideousness of all that meets the eye in Ma- 

 rocco. A ruinous house, with windows closed by weather- 

 beaten rickety lattice-work, is not a beautiful object, but 

 it may be sometimes picturesque, and, at the worst, is far 

 better than a dead wall of crumbling mud, such as here 

 meets the eye on every side. It would seem as if the 

 most miserable suburbs of all the other towns of North 

 Africa and Western Asia had been collected together and 

 enclosed within a lofty wall, so that seen from without the 

 whole might be palmed off on mankind as the efiBgy of a 

 great city. 



On deliberating over the events of the evening in rela- 

 tion to our own future prospects, we found reason to think 



