‘Plenty time, Mr. Moore,’ said Driss, holding up his brown hands and chuckling. ‘There are many, many; more ’an three hundred, and many soldiers, and many Soudanese,’ by which last Driss meant slaves. There was indeed plenty of time; it took the company all that day and part of the next to cross by the slow, heavy barges, carrying twenty people and half-a-dozen animals at each load, and rowed generally by two men, sometimes by only one. We descended from the Kasbah and made our way down the street of shops, the Sok or market street, as it is called, and out through the Water Port to the rock-studded sands upon which the caravan was landing. It was an extraordinary sight. The tide was out, and the water, which at high tide laps the greenish walls, now left a sloping shore of twenty yards. The boats when loaded would push up the river close to the other shore, then taking the current off a prominent point, swing over in an arc to the Rabat side. Empty, they would go back the same way by an inner arc. On our side they ran aground generally between two rocks, when the black, bare-legged eunuchs, dropping their slippers, would elevate their skirts by taking up a reef at the belts, and jump into the water to take the women to dry land on their stalwart backs. Only in rare instances did much of the woman’s face show--and then she was a pretty woman and young; those old or pock-marked were always careful to cover, even to the extent of hiding one eye. Nevertheless the wives of the Sultan as they got upon the backs of his slaves gathered their _sulhams_ up about their knees, displaying part of a leg, in almost every case unstockinged, and always dangling a heelless slipper of red native leather. In Morocco, as I have indicated before, the costumes of men and those of women are practically the same except for fullness and, in the case of nether-garments, colour. The short trousers of a man, for instance, are generally brown and his slippers never anything (when new) but yellow. The Sultan’s wives with few exceptions were covered in white _sulhams_; round their heads were bands of blue ribbon knotted at the back, fixing their hoods and veils for riding. While the slaves brought up the luggage, working with a will like men conducting their own business, the women held the mules and horses, covered with wads of blanket, all of Ottoman red, and mounted with high red Arab saddles. The women were usually subdued and to all appearances modest, though all of them would let their black eyes look upon the infidels longer than would the modest maid of a race that goes unveiled. But of course we were a sight to them not of every day. Now and then a lady whose robe was of better quality than most, seemed distressed about some jewel case or special piece of luggage, and worried her servant, who argued back in a manner of authority. It was evident the slaves had charge each of a particular lady for whom he was responsible.