Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/125

Rh do not yet recognize the authority of the sultan, still continues in various parts of the district

We had only time to visit cursorily the ancient mosque, the colorful suks, some humming caravanserais, the bashaws' palaces and a few of the most important buildings of the town, before our chauffeur was honking for us to return. I should have disregarded the importunity of our driver to have remained long among the hundreds of tombs of the old necropolis, were it not that I knew these burial-places had long ago been despoiled of all their treasures and interest by that extraordinary caste of treasure seekers, who work throughout these districts with the aid of Marabouts their own magic incantations and their special talismans, all of which guide them in divining the location of their spoils.

After we had passed through and beyond the oakforested hills of Ghiata, the road began to climb in sharp curves up the slopes of a mountain-range from whose summit we espied in the distance an immense dark-green, almost-black, oasis, the winding blue line of a river and the slender minarets above the shining white spot of a town—Fez, the dominator of the minds and hearts of Maghreb.