DINING WITH THE SULTAN OF MOROCCO.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 2343, 16 July 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

DINING WITH THE SULTAN OF MOROCCO.

DrsiNt; with the Sultan of Morocco i« more of an honour than a pleam e according to the account of a recent visitor connected with the French Embury. The Sultan is even more of a spiritual than a temporal monarch —a sort of crowned .saint, ox officio—and, therefore, it is beneath his sacred dignity to dine 5u person with his guests, and he deputes a representative from his suite. Ttie palace is too sacred a shrine to be the scene of such festivity, and the dinner is u-allv served in the garden of the summer palace, outside the town of Fez. When the narrator dined in this second hand way with his sacred majesty the weather was hot and the dinner was served in a to.vn palico garden, beneath orange, lemon, and pomegranate trees, where the buttercups, cornflowers, and daisies grew so tail that they mingled with the houghs, and the guests had hud w.«ik to fight tln-ir way on horseback to the table, or rather tray. A drum major, like a steward with a baton, headed the procession of slaves bearing the food <m trays of wood with deep border* and conical cover? of straw. The removal of these covers disclose 1 a frightful spectacle of frieasces of sheep and chickens, prepared with honey, sii»ar f syiup, and fruits, and all im igiuahle and unimaginable horrors possible fo cookery. The only dishes which a European could eat was one of mutton (which was terribly greasy) and the e.oucousson. The slave who held thisakwardly spilled it into las sh evos and bosom, and con wientioudy turned it on (he plate again. This upset European stomachsand desire to indulge init, though they found that the slave knew etiquette. The proper way to cat concousson is to take a quantity in ihe palm of the hand, eat it as best you may, and return the remainder—for the whole will never quit the palm—into the common dish, lest the other guC'ts should be deprived of even a crumb of the choke delicacy.—Correspondent Boston Herald.