CH. IX. A FEESH DIFFICULTY. ,213 



Arround. When the sheik an-ived about 7 a.m. he at 

 once declared that he had undertaken to conduct us to 

 Arround, but that to carry the luggage he saw prepared 

 was utterly out of the question. A long and vehement 

 controversy ensued ; at first it was impossible to under- 

 stand the real nature of the difficulty, and when this was 

 gradually made clear, the objections seemed to us so inco- 

 herent and inconsistent that we suspected them to be 

 mere pretexts to cover some unavowed obstacle in the 

 sheik's mind. 



It appeared that the tin cases were the real stumbling 

 blocks. ' "VMien the people of Arround see those cases,' 

 said Si Hassan, ' nothing will persuade them that they are 

 not filled with treasure — they will attack us in the night, 

 and will kill you and me too, in order to get possession of 

 them.' ' They will believe the boxes to be full of gun- 

 powder ' — so ran another version of the diflSculty — ' and 

 think you have come to take possession of their valley, 

 and will fight to resist your remaining there.' We 

 suspected at the time that the unavowed cause of offence 

 lay in the boxes being painted green — the colour of the 

 Prophet and his descendants — but from the slight atten- 

 tion paid by the mountaineers to the observances of 

 Moslem law, even in more important matters, we after- 

 wards rejected this explanation, and were inclined to 

 believe that the sheik knew his own people, and truly 

 represented the strange fancies to which they are subject. 



The tin boxes were reluctantly sacrificed, and with 

 them the possibility of making any large collection of 

 living plants in the upper region of the Great Atlas. The 

 luggage was repacked, and after several hours' delay we 

 started about 10.30 a.m. by the same track which had 

 been the scene of our recent night adventure. 



The weather during the last two days had been gradu- 

 ally changing from the condition of ' set fair ' to which 

 we had been used since our arrival in Marocco. The 

 barometer had fallen progressively fully five millimetres. 



