Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/301

Rh Suddenly, after one of the abrupt turns, we saw before us an azure curtain, as it were, hung from the line of the horizon, indistinct and hazy, for it was still behind a morning mist which the sun had not yet chased away. Having covered our one hundred ten miles in less than three hours, we were skirting the shore of the Atlantic before nine o'clock and looking upon the black line of the prison island where criminals and the too-insistent adversaries of the sultan are held in banishment.

Quick to turn our eyes from this line of menacing, unlovely buildings and grim shores, we could not check cries of admiration as we picked up a beautiful peninsula breasting the blue of the sea with its golden sands, its white houses, white minarets and whitened walls.

"A flock of white swans on the azure shore!" exclaimed Zofiette.

It was Mogador, the ancient Roman Thamusiga of which nothing remains except the records of its history. Soon we were at the base of the peninsula and were running out the narrowing neck of land that is being gradually eaten away by the hungry waves. As we entered the town we found its streets exceptionally narrow but very straight, an unusual feature and one attributed to the French architect and Christian slaves who built the city under the orders of Sultan Mohammed ben Abd Allah. But there was little that was unique or curious in the town, if one except the old fortress and the abandoned palace of the sultan.

Near Mogador we saw forests of Argania Sideroxylon, which furnishes a hard yellow wood, leaves that are of use for feeding cattle and nuts that are both eaten by