Our course now lay inland; but, instead of following the direct way back to Tangier, we were led by a false report (our first experience of blundering interpretation of English by the help of Moorish Arabic) to bear to the left, and recross the Djebel Kebir, so as to take Sir J. D. Hay’s villa of Ravensrock on our way back to the town. Near the track we passed close to a native village, or _douar_, the first which we had seen. When we had heard that the native population is broadly distinguished into two classes by the fact that some retain their original nomadic habits so far as to live permanently in tents, moving from one spot to another during the course of the year, while the others live in houses, and have become rooted to the soil, it never occurred to us that there could be any difficulty in distinguishing between one class and the other with the help of such obvious characteristic marks. But we soon found that the difference is but slight, and not very apparent. The black camel’s hair tent is often, both in seeming and in fact, a more durable dwelling than the miserable huts, composed chiefly of slender branches to which the dried leaves still adhere, covered sometimes with brown straw, and oftener with some tattered fragments of cloth, the remains of worn-out garments. Only the mountain tribes, the descendants of the ancient Bereber stock, whose southern descendants we were to become acquainted with in the valleys of the Great Atlas, have preserved the familiar use of stone masonry in this part of Africa. Laden with plants, and with appetites sharpened by our climb over the hill, we returned to our comfortable quarters at the Victoria Hotel. We did not pass over the very highest point of the Djebel Kebir; but an observation taken some sixty or eighty feet lower indicated an elevation of about 800 feet above the sea level. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: This episode forms the subject of Calderon’s noble play—_El Prencipe Costante_.] [Footnote 2: A copy of this view is given in the frontispiece.] [Footnote 3: Wentzel Hollar (or Hollard), a native of Prague, was sent to Tangier in 1669 by the king to take views of the town and its fortifications, which he afterwards engraved. Being one of the most distinguished engravers of the time, he settled in England, and executed some 2,400 prints, chiefly etchings, which are remarkable for their spirit, freedom, lightness, and finish. Hollar was one of the most conscientious of men; he worked for the booksellers at the rate of 4d. an hour, and always with an hour-glass on his table, which he invariably laid on its side, to prevent the sand from running, when not actually at work with his pencil or graving tool, and even when conversing on his business with his employers. He is said to have died in great poverty, with an execution in his house and a prison in prospect.] CHAPTER II.