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National Geographic : 1925 Mar
Contents
LOOKI G DO\V:\'" O:\'" ECROPE 287 ( Tarik). The wind sweeps through the narrow strait, scattering sudden flashes of white foam in the i\Iediterranean blue, like fireflies against a twilight sky, while beyond lies Ceuta on the l\100rish coast, with the highest peak of its headland, the African "Pillar of Hercules," standing out menacing, portentous (see page 298). SKIRTING TIlE AFRICAN COAsT U TDER A PITILESS SUN The international port of Tangier be- neath our wings, 'white, flat-roofed houses rising above each other in tiers of cubes, a solitary minaret jutting into the air, a gray line marking the trace of ancient battlements, Portuguese or English. To our left lie the Riff hills, where Spain is vainly bleeding herself to death; before us, brown, burnt, and dead, the wide, rolling world of the Bled, the ),10- roccan veldt; on our right, the restless blue of the Atlantic. This is the East, bright and shining as a sword, under a pitiless sun. Here and there, on the lone, treeless plain, are flocks of Berber sheep, conical huts of the indigenes) and the clustered black tents of nomads. vVe skirt the .-\frican coast, where Ph~nician, and, later, Portuguese caravels crept cau- tiou ly southward. The heat at this hour of the day, even at 2.000 feet, is stifling. From my ex- posed perch on the sack of mail, the blast ·from the propeller is like that from the . op~ned grate of a furnace; impossible to look westward. toward the burnished sun low on the horizon. I crouch down to find shelter in the shadow of the cockpit, but the oppressive air seeps up and stifles with its' stagnant warmth. Our. pilot des~ends to a few hundred feet above the Bled, where it is surpris- ingly cooler. rhe white-dovelike glitter of an Arab town appears l~y the blue rim of the Atlantic, the plunging breakers crashing soundlessly at its feet. Forlorn processions of camels move· along the dusty trails; an astonished ),Ioor, wrapped in loose, voluminous robes, looks up from his ambling mule. . Then Sale (Salli) of a dazzling white- ness, ancient home of the "Sally Rovers," and Rabat-el-Fath, the Imperial City, on the banks of the Bu Regreg, winding down to meet the blue of the ocean under high cliffs, through a brown-velvet valley (see illustration, page 300). As we glide down over the Residency, the sun slips at last behind the low, banked clouds on the horizon, in gray mist and secret splashes of fire. and the red cliffs across "The Father of Glitter- ing" are reflected like a flame in the river. Here l\10nsieur, my traveling compan- ion, bids me bon voyage and crawls stiffly over the side of the fuselage; my sack of mail yields its place to a comfort- able chair, and the pilot and I are off in the closing hour of the day for our final hop. TIIREF, ClnUZATIOXS PASSF,D IX REVIEW IX IS I-IOeRS The blinding light of the afternoon has given way to a velvet softness. The rolling Bled upon the ~ \tlantic still lies burnt and brown, but there is more water here in the occasional meandering stream than in the sun-baked arroyos of Spain. Roused by the roar of our engine, great storks rise leisurely before us and "'ing their way across a marsh, a study in black and ,,,hite. ~\t a bare 100 feet of altitude. we skim over a 10'" stone wall, behind which an imperturbable. worm-eaten camel stalks languidly round and round a water ,,·heel. Here are the ~qualor and simplicity of primitive life 111 a land burnt dn' b\· an African sun. Little native dOll.1.;:e}·s appear almost in- visible under their heavy load . an ass and a camel march slowl): along too-ether; in the distant eastern haze are the foot- hills of the High Atlas Mountains, for- bidding refuge of the dissident Berber tribes, the insollllzis. The pilot dips down suddenly to a few feet above the broad Atlantic beach, and, with wheels almost touching the sand. we skim south, dunes flying by our wing tip, the pungent salt air of the crashing waves filling our nostrils. Thus we ru h suddenly upon Ca ablanca. zooming up O\'er the artificial harbor. across the white and yellow houses and ocher-tinted towers, and come at length to rest upon the flying field beside a military camp (see pages 39 I and 302). In the cool of the evening I wander through the narrow, winding streets within the walls of the old :Moorish
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