Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/296

280 the "bakjal Sousi" of the Moroccan, towns, sellers of dried fruits and aromatic herbs? Others, especially those belonging to the religious sect of the great Marabout, Musa es-Semlali, wander throughout all Morocco and Algeria as acrobats and jugglers. They likewise band themselves together and go much farther afield, as laborers to Europe and even to America, where they readily take on the external features of the different culture but never abandon their Islamic faith and save penny after penny to bring them back to the mountains of their warlike ancestors, where the mysterious tablets with the plans of buried treasure are preserved, together with the greatest treasure of all, the most beautiful women in Morocco. I have seen them, lithe, proud and bold. With their attractive mouths and arresting eyes they reminded me of the mountain women in the Caucasus, those fiery sheeagles of Imeritia and Georgia. It is consequently not strange that it should be the dream of rich men of Fez and Marrakesh to possess such women nor that these girls of the Sous, either captured or bought, often reach high honors in the harems of the Masters of the Mountains, of the pashas or even of the sultans.

I remember having seen once an epitomized presentation of a drama of the Sous mountains. It was in one of the small oases grouped around picturesque Biskra. I was there on Monday, the market day, when the natives came in from the neighboring villages and camps to sell sheep and wool and to purchase in return cloth, tea and sugar. Groups of them with their donkeys had gathered in the small kisaria, where everything was in a flux of movement, as the merchants inspected sheep and