Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/302

286 cows and camels and are used for the production of oil. These forests are often interspersed with growths of sandarac-trees (also called arar-trees), which serve more than the ordinary single purpose of supplying material for the carpenter, in that they produce sandarac, a resin that is employed in the manufacture of certain varnishes.

Having still nearly a hundred miles to cover before nightfall, we left Mogador shortly after luncheon and were soon running through the rather fertile lands of the Shiadma tribe. On the way we were overtaken by a cold wind and a terrific rain, whose veritable torrents of water, streaming down from the clouds, transformed the gray and yellowish fruit-trees into lovely greens and raised flowers in the seared and parched grasses, where none seemed to exist before. Then, after but a few moments' duration of the storm, another miracle occurred. The immense puddles and even the little streams that had been formed seeped away into the porous soil quite as though they had never existed, the sun reappeared from behind the clouds, and everything dried off with such rapidity that only the green leaves of the trees and the brilliant spots of color contributed by the flowers remained as witnesses of the passing shower.

At frequent intervals along the road we passed rich kubbas and gleaming, white zaouias. This neighborhood of Safi and Mogador has long been known as the home of numerous religious confraternities and sects, among them the followers of the mysterious prophet Berghwat, who lived in the twelfth century and, among others of his tenets, forbade the killing of cocks, on the ground that the brain and especially the eyes of this bird possessed