WHAT FEZ IS LIKE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 336, 24 June 1911, Page 9

WHAT FEZ IS LIKE.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE MOROCCAN: CITY. Fez.—its native name is Fas, mid means ''a hoe"—is the northern capital of Morocco, as Marrakesh is its southern capital. It lies towards the southern lip of a cast level plain, and a horseshoe of barren hills, dotted with scrub, surrounds .it on three sides. Seen from afar oil. as the traveller crosses the sandy expanse of plain, Fez, with its white walls and dazzling minarets, looks like a crumb of bride-cake on the rim of a great copper dish. Seen from the. hills behind and around it. itlie city is a great valleyful of white Hat roofs and domes and square towers, so crowded together that hardly anywhere can a trace of road or street be seen. Mere and there, among the crowded buildings, are, irregular patches of the rich and the pleasure grounds of the Sultan. And, seen from the bank of the stream that rings it to the northward, or from the olive groves that clothe the lower hill slopes, Fez is a fairy city—a place of ivory palaces, with palms and orange trees, cascades and fountains, strange architecture, all in dazzling white, backed by a wonderful blue sky. The city lies athwart the mighty caravan road that starts in the big marketplace of Tangier, running southward from the Hab-el-Fas, where sits the aged (.reen Marabout—the holy man of the town—over the Red Mountain of Alcazar, and thence, across burning yellow sands .to Marrakesh, and across the Atlas into the Sahara itself. This is one of the great highways of Northern Africa, linking the Moorish towns with those of the greater desert, and ending at last at the gates of distant Timbuctoo. And it enters the. Bab Segma, the chief of the northern gates of the city of Fez, after winding for nearly two hundred dusty miles from Tangier. As the traveller approaches by this road—which is in reality a mere multiplicity of parallel camel-tracks—his first sight of Fez is a slender minaret rearing its jade inlaid shaft above a cloud of green foliage. With this in view, he will ride on hopefully, mile after mile, across that interminable plain; and

at the cwl of an hour Fez will seem no nearer tlian before. On his right hand ilnws the Wad Fas—the Fez river; and on hia left a sharp spur of hill, dotted with scrub clumps that give it the exact appearance of a leopard's hide, rears itself to join the loftier crests that hem the city in on the east. All things, even a journey in Morocco, must have (heir end; and at last the traveller rides in under the frowning Kali Segnia. whose spikes, when first 1 saw it, were adorned with the black and withered heads of sundry malefactors, and rebels and whose panels are platedi with massive iron. j

Passing the booths of sellers of dried fruits', tobacco and spices, one turns through another gateway to the right and enters an open courtyard, where stands the now dismantled arms factory, at which, in the days of Abdul Aziz, an enterprising Italian toiled in vain to make for himself a fortune. One of the j many entries to the Sultan's palace lies at -tin' back of this anas factory. There are two more entries to the courtyard. Through one of them you pass into the Medina, where merchants of strange foodstuffs sit behind their wares; and past the Medina lies the Mellah—the busy Jewish quarter. The French and Oerman Consulates are opposite the Mellah, separated from it bv a stretch of gardens; but to reach the British Consulate you must leave the courtyard by the other exit of which I ■•poke, and ride past the Beggars' Wall, where the lame and blind and leprous continually cry for alms; and through a fondak or caravanserai where storks build their tattered nests on the housetops overlooking lines of mules and horses tethered by the forefeet. Perhaps it will aid the sense of direction to assume that London is Fez, and that Hie (Ireat Northern terminus at King's Cross is the Hag Segma. In that, case the arms factory lies, roughly, where Euston Station stands. Between Euston and King's Cross, stretching northward over Kentish Town and St. Pancras, lie the palace and the gardens of the Sultan, Tottenham Court road will roughly represent the neighborhood of the, Mellah, with the line of Euston road representing the. main street of the Medina The British Consulate is the Strand Palace Hotel. Southward, towards Westminster and Lambetn, lie the innumerable flat-roofed houses of Fez-el-Bali, and from their midst rises the gold tipped mosque of Mulai Idris, patron saint of the city—the Westminster Abbey, both in character and location, of the town. The Westminster, Lambeth, Soutlnvark and Blackfiars districts of Fez are busy hives of industry, divided, after the fashion of Oriental towns, into separate quarters for the followers of the various crafta. Thus, the gunsmiths and armorers arc busy in the Waterloo road, the dyers occupy Stamford street, and in the neighborhood of Blackfriars Bridge are the booths of the tailors anrt the makers of slippers and turbans. Fondaks and caravanserais lie round about Farringdon street and Clerkcnwcll.

This, of course, is a roughish simile, for to compare London and Fez is to compare towns which, m structure and in geographical configuration, aro as unlike as any two towns could well be. But, if the map of Fez were superimposed upon a map of London, the localities would fit much as I have described. T have likened Fez to a valleyful of buildings. That is exactly what it is; and the valley is a remarkably steep one. In some places so precipitous is the descent that the streets are paved in tiers, so that they are neither more nor le.su than irregular and—to a horseman—rather dangerous stono stairways. The paving of such streets is haphazard to a degree. Millstones, cobbles, and chancefound boulders are used indiscriminately. To revert to my former comparison of London and Fez, imagine that from the parallel of Euston road the ground slopes fairly sharply down to the river, and then ri.ses'again abruptly, particularly towards the east. Fez, of course, is a walled city, with battlements and bastions, at the building of which Christian slaves have toiled in the past. On the south and southeast breaches made bv rebel tribes arcstill unrepaired, or hastily Mled iu with rubbish. Even private houses in that neighborhood are fortified, and „omi' are even equipped with watch-towers. I lived for some months in a house on (1 1( , wall in the Sidi lm .lida quarter of the city, looking southward upon the mountain fastnesses of the rebellious licni Mlir and licni Warain tribesmen The architecture of this house was eloquent of the perpetual danger of attack from that quarter. The door itself was iron-plated, studded with spikes, and held fast bv bolts; iiiid bars thicker than a mini's arm The hat roof scarcely ,l„,„ed above the high miter wall that cHoscd the whole building. and a tiny square watch-tower rose trom one corner of it. In almost any house a. handful of determined Europeans might hold a crowd at bay for days in those narrow streets whence suitable attacking grounds are very scarce.