Here I must break my story in order to make it complete, and anticipate our arrival at Casablanca with an account of how the French army happened to be lodged in this Moorish town. In 1906 a French company obtained a contract from the Moorish Government to construct a harbour at Casablanca; and beginning work they found it expedient, in order to bring up the necessary stone and gravel, to lay a narrow-gauge railway to a quarry a few miles down the coast. In those Mohammedan countries where the dead are protected from ‘Infidel’ tread the fact that the tracks bordered close on a cemetery, in fact passed over several graves, would have been cause perhaps for a conflict; but this--though enemies of France have tried to proclaim it--was not a serious matter in Morocco, where the Moslems are done with their dead when they bury them and anyone may walk on the graves. The French were opposed solely because they were Christian invaders to whom the Sultan had ‘sold out.’ They had bought the High Shereef with their machines and their money, but the tribes did not intend to tolerate them. After many threats the Arabs of the country came to town one market-day prepared for war. Gathering the local Moors, including those labouring on the railway, they surrounded and killed in brutal fashion, with sticks and knives and the butts of guns, the engineer of the locomotive and eight other French and Italian workmen. The French cruiser _Galilée_ was despatched to the scene, and arriving two days later lay in harbour apparently awaiting instructions from home. By this delay the Moors, though quiet, were encouraged, hourly becoming more convinced that if the French could land they would have done so. They were thoroughly confident, as their resistance demonstrated, when, after three days, a hundred marines were put ashore. As the marines passed through the ‘Water Port’ they were fired upon by a single Moor, and thereupon they shot at every cloaked man that showed his head on their march of half-a-mile to the French consulate. At the sound of rifles the _Galilée_ began bombarding the Moslem quarters of the town; and the stupid Moorish garrison, with guns perhaps brought out of Spain, essayed to reply, and lasted for about ten minutes. But the landing force of the French was altogether too small to do more than protect the French consulate and neighbouring European houses. Town Moors and Arabs turned out to kill and rape and loot, as they do whenever opportunity offers, and for three days they plundered the places of Europeans and Jews and at last fought among themselves for the spoils until driven from the town by reinforcements of French and Spanish troops.