The ruin of Constantinople shall happen in sultan Mahomet's time; and then the Turks shall be reduced to so few in number, that sixty Turkish women shall have but one husband among them."

The truth is, games have done for women what the dervish's subtle prescription did for the sick sultan.

The sultan, having very bad health from over-feeding, sedentary habits, and luxurious ease, consulted the clever dervish.

The dervish knew that it would be useless to recommend the sultan simply to take exercise.

On the edge of one of the reservoirs a sentimental Sultan built in the last century a little pleasure-house called the Menara.

Senegal, the Soudan and Bornou submitted to Abou-el-Abbas, the Sultan of Timbuctoo was dethroned, and the celebrated negro jurist Ahmed-Baba was brought a prisoner to Marrakech, where his chief sorrow appears to have been for the loss of his library of 1,600 volumesthough he declared that, of all the numerous members of his family, it was he who possessed the smallest number of books.

Besides this learned bibliophile, the Sultan Abou-el-Abbas brought back with him an immense booty, principally of ingots of gold, from which he took his surname of "The Golden"; and as the result of the expedition Marrakech was embellished with mosques and palaces for which the Sultan brought marble from Carrara, paying for it with loaves of sugar from the sugar-cane that the Saadians grew in the Souss.

We motored past the gates, where the Sultan's Black Guard was drawn up, and out to the msalla,[A] a sort of common adjacent to all the Sultan's residences where public ceremonies are usually performed.

We motored past the gates, where the Sultan's Black Guard was drawn up, and out to the msalla,[A] a sort of common adjacent to all the Sultan's residences where public ceremonies are usually performed.

The palissade was open on one side, and within it we could see moving about among the snowy-robed officials a group of men in straight narrow gowns of almond-green, peach-blossom, lilac and pink; they were the Sultan's musicians, whose coloured dresses always flower out conspicuously among the white draperies of all the other court attendants.

Presently the circle broke up, there was an agitated coming and going, and some one said: "The Sultan has gone to the tent at the back of the enclosure to kill the sheep.

The Sacrifice of the Sheep, one of the four great Moslem rites, is simply the annual propitiatory offering made by every Mahometan head of a family, and by the Sultan as such.

In reality, of course, the Moslem blood-sacrifice comes, by way of the Semitic ritual, from far beyond and behind it, and the belief that the Sultan's prosperity for the coming year depends on the animal's protracted agony seems to relate the ceremony to the dark magic so deeply rooted in the mysterious tribes peopling North Africa long ages before the first Phoenician prows had rounded its coast.

The Sultan's band had struck up a shrill hammering and twanging, the salute of the Black Guard continued at intervals, and the caparisoned steeds began to rear and snort and drag back from the cruel Arab bits with their exquisite niello incrustations.

Within a few feet of the Sultan they drew in, their leader uttered a cry and sprang forward, bending to the saddle-bow, and with a great shout the tribe galloped by, each man bowed over his horse's neck as he flew past the hieratic figure on the grey horse.

[Illustration: From a photograph from "France-Maroc" The Sultan of Morocco under the green umbrella (at Meknez, 1916)]

As the Sultan advanced we followed, abreast of him and facing the oncoming squadrons.

The Sultan had sent word to Mme.

But for the enchanting glimpses of sea and plain through the lattices of the gallery, the apartment of the Sultan's ladies falls far short of occidental ideas of elegance.

They were all (our interpretess whispered) the Sultan's "favourites," round-faced apricot-tinted girls in their teens, with high cheek-bones, full red lips, surprised brown eyes between curved-up Asiatic lids, and little brown hands fluttering out like birds from their brocaded sleeves.

[Illustration: From a photograph from "France-Maroc" The Sultan entering Marrakech in state]

Such was his Majesty the Sultan Moulay Youssef, despoiled of sacramental burnouses and turban, and shuffling along on bare yellow-slippered feet with the gait of a stout elderly gentleman who has taken off his boots in the passage preparatory to a domestic evening.

He told me that Boonapoort was indeed a rare and daring infidel, who, from a mere soldier, became the sultan of an immense nation, and gave the law to all the Europeans.

Our route brought us through Murnies, celebrated for its orange groves and for the horrible execution of many Cretans by Mustapha Kiritly in the "great insurrection"that of 1837to punish them for assembling to petition the Sultan for relief.

The next day the sultan received in state the compliments of his officers.