Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/212

 CHAPTER XV

IN THE CITY OF THE BLACK TYRANT

HILE we chatted over this absorbing question, our car ran through a rich agricultural country with unbroken olive-orchards, cultivated fields, vineyards and fruit-trees flanking the road. There was only one other district that I had up to this time seen with which I could compare this countryside, and that was Bel Abbes in western Algeria. I had read that the ancient Berber tribe of the Meknassa had, for some unrecorded reason, separated into two parts, one locating east of Fez and founding the town of Tasa, while the other trekked west of the capital and laid the foundations of Meknassa ez-Zitun, which is "Meknes among the olives." It would be difficult to find a more appropriate name for this place, for, as it thrust itself into the landscape at a distance of six miles, it gave the impression of being located on a mountain with the gently sloping sides entirely covered by a dark forest of olive-trees. At this distance Meknes presented quite a different picture from the other Moroccan towns we had seen, in as much as these were pressed and crowded into square walls, while Meknes stretched out in an extended line along the horizon and gave us, as we gazed upon it at this distance, the impression of a gigantic crenelated wall with its seven minarets standing out like