and having more than once had to repair the loss of them by the work of my own servants, I am, perhaps, qualified beyond most dwellers in houses to speak on the subject. Putting aside magnificence or grandeur, and having in view use and adaptation, I may say I never knew what a tent was until I had seen those of Morocco.[307] It is ornamented with a golden ball; the flaming sword on the cloths of the roof and the valance imitates the crenulated top of a battlement. The colour of these devices is blue. In the description of the Jewish Tabernacle we have exactly the Moorish manner of pitching. Blue is the first colour mentioned; purple and red follow. But these may have been added as distinctive to the sacred tent, as they were to the priestly garments; and as blue distinguished the common clothing of the Israelites, so might it be expected to be the mark of his tent. The manner of lacing the curtain to the roof is precisely that described in Exodus, xxv. 45: “Thou shalt make loops of blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the selvage in the coupling, and also on the other curtain. Fifty loops shalt thou make in the one curtain, and fifty loops shalt thou make in the other, so that the loops shall take hold of one another.” These fifty loops were to be of the length of twenty-eight cubits, so that they would be ten inches apart. This is precisely the manner in which the curtain of the Moorish tent is fitted to the roof, loop through loop all the way round, and the loops are not far from the above distance; and, probably, in the larger fittings of the Sultan’s establishment, they coincide with the dimensions laid down by Moses. While at Rabat I had failed in every endeavour to see the Shereffean encampment. I at last was gratified, as on quitting the city we passed through it. I, however, neglected to take note of it in these nightly memoranda, having been too absorbed by the new life that was presented to me. Ten thousand cavalry--the horses picketed close down, or rather packed, in front and rear of the line of tents--were encamped in one enormous and unbroken figure. It was an oblong, lengthways stretching east and west. The centre was kept clear and unencumbered, and there stood the Sultan’s tents, though untenanted by him: the appearance presented was that of a miniature fortress, in the centre of a clear esplanade--the wall or curtain about nine feet, the turrets at the corners a little more; the cornices pointed to represent the crenulated battlements. Over this the tops of seven or eight turrets appeared, their golden balls glittering in the sun.