Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/238

222 picture of the sultan's cortege with its black guard, its ancient etiquette and the attendants fanning away the flies.

Even though the feeling of strange contrasts and astonishment may be the first, superficial emotion, after a time that of pride gradually asserts itself, mingled with a real satisfaction that the civilization of the white race can respect and guard not only those relics of the past that are cut in stone or molded in bronze, but also those that are preserved in the customs and cults of the living, that it can calmly continue its work and its life alongside the quite different currents of thought and life of other peoples whose spirit is foreign to its own. As I have had occasion to observe great masses of colored men during my wanderings and travels, I have always felt the dangers that seemed to be menacing them from every side, their helplessness and their terror before the unknown of the future. Here in Morocco I had an impression such as one feels when a doctor arrives at the side of a sick man who is threatened with death unless scientific medical aid be tendered, or when the firemen arrive at a building that has just burst into flames. Involuntarily one's eyes turn to the Shellah minaret, to the Hassan tower and to the walls of the Udaya—to all these which speak so eloquently of the dire illnesses which once tormented this land and of the fires which gutted it.