File:In Morocco (1920) (14779085501).jpg

Identifier: inmorocco00wharuoft (find matches)
Title: In Morocco
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937
Subjects: Morocco -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York Scribner
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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(written when the place was alreadypartly destroyed) archaeologists disagree as to theuses of the crypt of rose-flushed clay whose twentyrows of gigantic arches are so like an alignmentof Roman aqueducts. Were these the vaultedgranaries, or the subterranean reservoirs under thethree miles of stabling which housed the twelvethousand horses? The stables, at any rate, werecertainly near this spot, for the lake adjoins theruins as in the chroniclers description; and betweenit and old Meknez, behind walls within walls, lieall that remains of the fifty palaces with theircupolas, gardens, mosques and baths. This inner region is less ruined than the mys-terious vaulted structure, and one of the palaces,being still reserved for the present Sultans use,cannot be visited; but we wandered unchallengedthrough desert courts, gardens of cypress and oHvewhere dried fountains and painted summer-housesare falling into dust, and barren spaces enclosed inlong empty facades. It was all the work of an (66)
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VOLUBILIS, MOULAY IDRISS AND MEKNEZ eager and imperious old man, who, to realize hisdream quickly, built in perishable materials; butthe design, the dimensions, the whole conception,show that he had not only heard of Versailles buthad looked with his own eyes on Volubilis. To build on such a scale, and finish the work in asingle lifetime, even if the materials be malleableand the life a long one, implies a command of humanlabor that the other Sultan at Versailles must haveenvied. The imposition of the corvee was of courseeven simpler in Morocco than in France, since thematerial to draw on w^as unlimited, provided onecould assert ones power over it; and for that purposeIsmael had his Black Army, the hundred and fiftythousand disciplined legionaries who enabled himto enforce his rule over all the wild country fromAlgiers to Agadir. The methods by which this army were raisedand increased are worth recounting in Ezzianiswords: A taleh^ of Marrakech having shown the Sul-tan a register cont

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