FALLEN SULTAN’S TOYS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2270, 15 August 1908, Page 1

FALLEN SULTAN’S TOYS.

Mr Walter B. Harris, “The Times” correspondent* in Morocco, describes, in a letter to that journal, the “evidences of civilisation” which Mulai Had, who is now reigning in Fez, is accused of destroying at the royal palace vacated by his brother, Mulai Abdul Aziz. “There are,” says Mr. Harris, “many broken and hopelessly rusty motor-cars —there are no roads in Morocco; a stable of scores of damaged bicycles; a studio packed from floor to ceiling with warped cameras and decaying photographic materials; a state coach, moth-eaten within, which the damp and rain of three years have almost turned to pulp; four-post beds of expensive looking-glass; a passenger lift, never installed, of course; vast kitchen ranges which burn coal, which is unprocurable in Morocco; a damaged steam launch or two; an enormous collection of biograph films, many of subjects which the London County Council would never permit in London; cases of imaginary and fantastic uniforms invented and evolved by expensive tailors; stores full of broken mechanical toys, gilded birdcages, telescopic ladders, such as arc used for cleaning tlie roofs of railway stations; an incomplete locomotive; a printing press, the weight of which has sunk it deep into an open-air tennis court, where it was first put ii)i and abandoned, and still remains; miles of wall-papers; kudos’ underclothing and false hair; fire balloons; pianos, harmoniums, and street organs; stuffed birds, and a thousand other miscellaneous atrocities, one and all corrupted by moth and rust, eaten by rats, and covered with mildew and cobwebs.” It is tlie accumulation of this “conglomeration of useless ami inartistic trash,” with the enormous expense involved, says Air. Harris, that has been the main cause of Abdul Aziz’s downfall.