Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/129

Rh which then took place quite in the same manner as do the bards of the people who today chant their folk-tales in the market-places. The Arab historians also state that Fez was founded in the ninth century. What was here before this epoch? Did the mythical Sef really exist? What nation was it that left rows and rows of tombs that can be seen today outside the walls erected by the Idrisides and added to by the Almoravides, these emigrants from the Sahara who sprang from the Berber tribe of the Almohades, who were in turn those mountaineers from the higher Atlas regions that afterwards ruled in Seville? It is only natural to surmise that here in this valley at the junction of these two rivers that brought to the fertile earth a lovely carpet of green, rich verdure, where a defence against invaders was easily established, there should have been from earliest centuries a dwelling-place for man.

Some indication of all this we had in the strange and abiding impressions which came to us, as we approached and drew up under the walls of this ancient capital, where our car seemed to be held up by the djinns or other spirits of the place as a wanton, unthinkable intruder. In any case, it was either these tutelary spirits or the effects of the reckless speed at which the chauffeur hurried us on over stony roads or even the open desert that brought the monster to a halt and forced us to make our more humble entry into the city of Idris II on foot in search of our hotel Before we had reached the gate we stopped as though transfixed, held by a biblical picture of the Holy Land that arose before us. Near a well sat an Arab with long nair falling over his shoulders and with