Morocco, the Land of the Extreme West 141 



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Remains of a Roman Bridge not Far from Tangier 



The memory of that evening is indeed 

 associated with an ineffaceable sense of 

 horror. We had gathered in the draw- 

 ing-room directly after dinner, when we 

 were startled by loud screams from the 

 servants' quarters. Followed by my step- 

 son, Mr. Cromwell Varley, whose wife 

 and two daughters, just home from 

 school at Geneva, completed, with Mrs. 

 Perdicaris, our family circle, I rushed 

 down a passage leading to the servants' 

 hall, where I came upon a crowd of 

 armed natives. 



Even then we did not realize our dan- 

 ger, but thought these intruders might be 

 a party from a neighboring village. Our 

 night guards were supplied from this 

 hamlet, and we supposed that they, like 



ourselves, had rushed in to learn the 

 cause of the uproar, which we, at the 

 moment, attributed to some renewal of a 

 quarrel that had broken out on a previ- 

 ous occasion between a young German 

 housekeeper and our French chef de 

 cuisine, when the latter, irritated by some 

 insulting allusion to the French defeats 

 at Metz and Sedan, had attacked the 

 housekeeper, when, as now, we had been 

 startled by her screams. 



As I turned to inquire of these natives 

 who crowded about me as to what had 

 occurred, I saw some of our European 

 servants already bound and helpless and, 

 at the same moment, we ourselves were 

 assailed by these intruders, who struck 

 us with their rifles. At the same instant 



