It was the fasting month of Ramadan at the time of our sojourn at Rabat, and no one could eat except at night. Every evening at six o’clock a white-cloaked gunner came out of the Kasbah walls and rammed into his antique cannon a load of powder sufficient, it would seem, to raise the dead of the cemetery in which it was discharged. For two reasons--that it was the cemetery and that the Ramadan gun was here--this was the gathering-place of all Moslems. Often we, too, went up to see the crowd and to watch with the gunner and the other Moors for the signal. All eyes were turned, not towards the Atlantic to see old Sol set, but inland, towards the town, where towered above the low houses a great white minaret, whence the Muezzin watched the sun and signalled with a banner of white. At the blast of the cannon a great shout went up from the hundred small boys gathered about; and, with the slope of the hill to lend them speed, everybody went hurrying into the town, the skirts of those who ran fluttering a yard behind them. In a minute came the boom from the gun of the _m’halla_, the city of tents, on the hills visible beyond the town walls. When we passed down the streets to our supper five minutes later, everybody was swallowing great gulps of _hererah_, Ramadan soup, breaking the long day’s fast. The little cafés, dingy and deserted during the day, were now brilliant and crowded, the keeper himself eating with one hand while he served with the other; and the roadway was studded with little groups of men who had squatted where they stood half-an-hour before the setting of the sun, and, spoon in hand, waited for the gun to boom. Christians and Mohammedans treat their religions with a curious difference: where the one is generally ashamed of reverence and never flaunts his faith, the other is afraid not to make a considerable show of his. Not a Moor would dare to eat or even touch a drop of water in the sight of another during Ramadan; though under our window overlooking the river it was the custom of an old beggar to come daily at noon, to roll himself into a ball on the ground as if sleeping, and under the cover of his ragged _jeleba_ make his lunch. Had he been caught at this he would probably have been stoned out of town.