The daily Cairo bulletin., 1882-01-12
A Visit 10 Morocco.

Visitors to Morocco find the country
and its people marvelously strange and
fresh. Theirs "are the rain and the
sunshine, and the ways of an old wis
dom by our world forgot" Nowhere
can a man be more conscious of the
mere JOY Of living; nowhere be more i'm
pressed with the vanity and tedium of
much that European civilization con-.
siders Indispensable to the interests of
life From the hour you set foot in the
country the present moment seems so
full of delight that there is but the
smallest desire to project life into antici-
patton. Time ceases to exist, or at least
to be of any account. 1t must be adj
mitted, however, that the disposition of
everybody in this lazy lotos- eating land
to act on this is at times little trouble
some. You have arranged to make an
excursion 10 a town in the interior; YOU
have fixed the day for starting after
having found that it must not be Tues
day, for "Tletsa feletsa" ("on the third
day all fails'D; nor on a Friday for that
is their Sabbath h--you have been promis-
ed guides and mules by such time; but
do not expect them there, they will not
come, You 90 to the man with whom
you have made arrangements; he is
probably doing nothing, and he has
probably nothing to say in answer to
your complaint but please, Allah, to-
morrow Yet if you manage to set
out on the third day, or before the week
has run out, you will have been treated
fairly well, They mean no neglect or
disrespect; il is only their "Old-World"
way. Hence their proverb, "Once over
the threshold the journeys half done"
For travelling there are, of course, neith-
er carriages nor roads; the roads so
called are only collocatons of mule and
camel tracks. Till within two or three
years ago there was not single wheeled
vehicle in Morocco; but now there is
known to be two--the one is q yellow
antediluuan gig, which the Sultan has
procured somehow II other, and which
figured some time ago in a State pro-
cesssion, to the astonishment and de-
light Of the spectators; the other is
wheelbamow which gentleman recent
ly took to Mogador, and of which the
stalwart Moor to whom it was consgn-
ed so little surlnised the use that when
he had filed it with mortar according
to instructions he promptly shouldered
it and strobe OF. Travelling on mule
back, however, in the large, well-padded
saddles of the country, with stirrups
like slippers, is nc great hardship TO
either man or woman, and the way is
constantly beguiled by some fresh illus
tration of Moorish life and manners; q
company of noisy country folk going to
or coming from market; n troop of horse
men dashing past, with flowing white
jelabs; the ghoStly-looking, silent caval-
cade of an Arab sheik of the plains, and
his harem, swathed from view-all but,
perhaps, one lustrous eye; the astonish-
ed rustic girl, who hides her face but
not her legs: or the toilsome, almost
naked peasant dawdling along behind
his aboriginal plow. A goat and dom
key may often be seen yoked together,
and woman has been seen in the place
of n goat; but whatever the team, the
plowing is always the samoa mere
scoring of the soil, and yet it brings forth
in abundance. .--PaU MaU Gazette.