After the first ten days of North African air, my cough had gone, so that I was quite able to appreciate the change of scene, the white buildings, the coloured people, the superb vegetation, the mosques (but not the mosquitoes, as the latter worried me terribly); and by degrees the fascination of the climate, the atmosphere of romance and adventure surrounding the interesting race amongst whom I was living, took hold of me. My artistic sense was being constantly appealed to, and everywhere I saw a picture awaiting my brush. The Arabs and Moors, in their picturesque dresses, were to me extraordinarily attractive, with their magnificent physique and bearing, and especially the letter-carriers with their finely moulded ankles and feet with perfect straight toes. At Tangier I was fortunate enough to behold two of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen. I was walking in the bay one evening, watching the sun set like a ball of fire, dipping into a sea that shimmered with a thousand opalescent reflections as the wavelets rippled to my feet, when I came upon a group of swarthy, naked fishermen hauling in their nets, which were full of leaping fish that scintillated iridescently. With strong fine movements the men drew them in, some standing in the water, others on the shore, their bodies wet with the water that rolled off their mahogany skins in pearly drops. At each movement of their superb limbs, the play of muscle attracted my eye, and as they turned, their bodies bathed in the amber light, I saw a multitude of scales from the fish clinging to their bodies, like so many sequins, gold in the sun and silver in the colder light from the east. Spellbound, I watched them falling into groups and alternating attitudes, which in themselves were magnificent--an Arabian Nights dream and an ideal composition for the painter who could depict the movement, colour, and light of a scene that few men are lucky enough to behold. I shall never forget it and never see such beauty again, for it is well-nigh impossible that nature should repeat such perfection, with similar conspiracies of light, shade, and shadow in exactly the same manner. [Illustration: GENERAL SMITH-DORRIEN. 1911.] [Illustration: LORD ROBERTS. 1900.] [Illustration: LORD KITCHENER. 1899.]