Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/30

Rh coloured mosaics of the glazed and painted tiles with which it was paved. In the midst was a fountain at which some Moors were performing their ablutions, while others were squatted about, bowing their heads to the "Holy Caaba."

But in Morocco, if the sight is entranced with ever recurring novelties and with much that is dazzling and beautiful, the other senses are compelled, in obedience apparently to the law of compensation, to endure much that is offensive beyond all expression, for while the ear is frequently startled by the most hideous and appalling sounds, the sense of smell is overwhelmed by indescribably abominable odours, that certainly do not come from Araby the Blest. But use, we all know, is second nature, and the inhabitants have not only learnt to endure them with patience, but would probably lament their absence, if by any extraordinary interruption to the usual course of things their olfactory nerves were deprived of their usual stimulant at the seasonable time. Ever Europeans must learn to endure what cannot be cured, and if they can never become reconciled to these odours, nor, like the natives, associate them with their reminiscences of the past, they at least learn, in the language of the poet, to "suffer and be still."

But to return from this digression. When prayer