MOROCCO IMPRESSIONS: TWO STUDIES IN WHITE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2355, 13 April 1899, Page 60

MOROCCO IMPRESSIONS: TWO STUDIES IN WHITE.

In Morocco the prevailing tone is greyish white, men's clothes, and houses, towns, bushes, tall umbellifera?, nodding like ghosts in autumn — all are white; white sands upon ttw shore, and in the Sahara, and all over a white and saddening light, as if the sun was tired of shining down for ever on the unchanging life. In no part of Morocco I have visited does the phrase " gorgeous East " have the 'least meaning; and this is always noted by the wandering easterns, who find the country dull and lacking colour compared with Asia, or, as the Arabs call it, "Blad Es Schark." . . . Morocco city is purely African. Negroes abound. The streets are never full With the exception oi the Kutabieh tower and some fine fountains . . . and the fine gate of the Kashbah of the best periods of Moorish work, there is no architecture. Sand, sand, and niore sand in almost every street, in the vast open spaces, in the long, winding, narrow lanes, outside the walls up to the city gates ; sand in your hair, your clothes, the coats of animals. Streets, streets, and still more streets of houses in decay. Yellow adobe wans, dazzling white roofs, and dense metallic semi-tropical vegetation shrouding the heaps of yellowish decaying masonry. No noise, the footfalls of the mules and camels falling into the sand as rain falls into the sea, with a soft swishing sound. — CunninghameGraham.