Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/210

194 have received and guarded the most proven magic recipes to cure the sick, and here poets come to write their tomes of verse."

For a long time the young Berber held our attention with innumerable stories of the place, as he guided us about through the town, where we noticed a Koran school with some of the Roman columns from Volubilis incorporated in its walls, were shown a fountain with miraculous healing powers and were led through the market and through dark, mysterious passageways under the houses.

At last we yielded to the insistent honkings from our chauffeur, who was signaling us from below that we must be away, if we would reach Meknes that evening. Consequently we scrambled down to the road and were soon again on our westward way. Before the jutting shoulders of the range moved out to cut off our view, we took one last look at this strange town perched upon this mountain ridge with its white walls standing out clear above the gray-green of the slope and jealously guarding its disorderly grouped buildings and minaret, which looked like a great spear thrust upward into the warm blue of the sky. El-Zerhun disappeared just as Ksar Faraun, or the Roman Volubilis, had previously melted away. The voices of Jupiter and of the descendant of Mahomet were hushed. One heard no longer the whisperings of the forum and of the unknown pagan gods, even the names of whom had long been forgotten through the disappearance of the tribes that worshipped them. However, they have in spirit persisted and maintained their influence and importance through the devotion and