Night catches us close to el Mouerid, a dullish pile of sun-dried bricks, the lord of which, one Si Bel Arid, is anesprit fort, and knowing me for a Christian, ostentatiously walks up and down talking on things and others to show his strength of mind. Though disapproving of them, most Moors like to be seen with Christians, in the same way some pious men are fond of listening to wicked women’s talk, not that theirconversation interests, but to show the asbestos quality of their own purity, and to set forth that, as in Rahab’s case no imputation can attach itself to men of virtuous life. Therefore, as maiden ladies are said to love the conversation of rakes, and clergymen, that of fallen women, so do Moors love to talk with and be seen in public with the enemies of God.
El Mouerid looks miserable in the storm of rain and wind, in which we leave it as the day is breaking. The Arab dress in windy weather teaches one what women undergo in petticoats upon a boisterous day; but still their pains are mitigated by the fact that generally men are near at hand to look at them, whereas we could not expect to find admiring ladies on the bleak limestone plain. Curious striations on the hills, as if the limestone “came to grass” in stripes, give an effect as of a building, to the rising foot-hills, into which we enter by the gorge of Bosargun, a rocky defile which gradually becomes a staircase like the road from Ronda to Gaucin, or that to heaven, almost untrodden of late years. We pass a clump of almond trees, by which a light chestnut[75]mare is feeding; she looks quite Japanese amongst the trees, buried up to the belly in aromatic shrubs; a little bird sits on her shoulder, no one is near her, though, no doubt, some sharp-eyed boy is hiding somewhere watching her, for in this district no animal is safe alone. From the top we get our first view of the Atlas in its entirety; snow, and more snow marking the highest peaks, the Glawi, Gurgourah, and the tall peaks behind Amsmiz. No mountain range I ever saw looks so steep and wall-like as the Atlas; but this wall-like configuration, though most effective for the whole range, yet robs the individual peaks of dignity.
To the east the stony plain of Morocco, cut intochannels here and there by the diverted water of the Wad el N’fis (a river I was destined to follow to its very source), under the highest peaks of Ouichidan, upon the very confines of the Sus. Here, for the first time, we see, though far below us, the curious subterraneous aqueducts, looking like lines of tan pits, with which the plain of Morocco is intersected everywhere.
These aqueducts, called Mitfias, are a succession of deep pits, dug at varying distances from one another; the water runs from pit to pit in a mud channel, and the whole chain of pits often extends for miles. Men who undertake such herculean labour in order to irrigate their fields cannot well be called lazy, after the fashion of most travellers who speak, after a fortnight’s residence in Morocco, of the “lazy Moors.” The truth is that the country-people of Morocco are industrious enough, as almost every people who live by agriculture are bound to be. Only the Arabs of the desert, and the Gauchos of the southern plains, and people who live a pastoral life, can be called lazy, though they, too, at certain seasons of the year, work hard enough. The Arabs and Berbers of Morocco work hard, and would work harder had they not got the ever-present fear of their bad government before them. When one man quarrels with another, after exhausting all the usual curses on his opponent’s mother, sister, wife, and female generation generally, he usually concludes by saying: “May God, in his great mercy, send the Sultan to you”—for he knows that even Providence is not so merciless as our Liege Lord.
About three miles below us are two curious flat-topped hills, looking like castles. Mohammed el Hosein pronounces them to have been the site of two strong castles of the Christians. What Christians, then?—Roman, or Vandal, or Portuguese? Perhaps not Christian at all, but Carthaginian; for in Morocco,any old building, the builders of which are now forgotten, is set down to the all-constructing Christians, in the same manner as in Spain, the Moors built all the castles and the Roman bridges, and generally made everything which is a little older than the grandfather of the man with whom you speak. Not but at times the person questioned puts in practice, to your cost, the pawky Spanish saying: “Let him who asks be fed with lies.” What Christians could have been so foolish as to build two castles in a barren plain, far off from water, does not appear. At any rate, after a careful search, we can discover no trace of building, and put the castles down with the enchanted cities Fata Morgana, Flying Dutchman, and the like phenomena, which seem more real than the material cities, ships, and optical illusions, which, by their very realness, appear to lose their authenticity, and to become like life, a dream.
Passing the castles, we emerged again upon a desert tract, which took almost two hours to pass, and, at the furthest edge of it a zowia of a saint, Sidi Abd-el Mummen, with a mosque tower, flanked by palms, rising out of a sea of olives twisted and gnarled with age, and growing so thickly overhead that underneath them is like entering a southern church, out of the fierce glare of the sun.
History has not preserved the pious actions which caused Si Abd-el Mummen to be canonised. In fact, Mohammed, if he came to life again, would have a fine iconoclastic career throughout the world of the Believers; for though they have not quite erected idols, graven or otherwise, yet all their countries are stuck as full of saints’ tombs, zowias of descendants of saints, and adoration of the pious dead prevails as much as in the Greek or Latin churches. True, the custom has its uses, as it serves to indicate the distance on roads, and men as naturally enquire theirway from Saint (Sidi) to Saint, as from church to church in Spain, or public-house to public-house in rural England. In other countries Saints, before becoming free of the fellowship, have to show their fitness for the post; but in Morocco no probation of any kind—that is, according to our ideas—seems to be necessary.
I knew an aged man, who used to sit before the Franciscan Convent, in the chief street of Tangier—a veritable saint, if saint exists. He sat there, dressed in a tall red fez,[78]given by some pious soldier, a long green caftan, clean white drawers, and a djellab of fine blue cloth. Long hair descended on both sides of his face in locks like bunches of chrysanthemums; his eyes were piercing, and yet wavering; for the poor Saint was nearer to Allah than the common herd by the want of some small tissue, fibre, or supply of blood to the vessels of the brain. Thus clothed and mentally accoutred for his trade, a basket by his side, and in his hand a long pole shod with iron, for he belonged to the sect called the Derkowi, he sat and told his beads, and took his alms, with an air of doing you a favour: for who gives to the poor does them no favour, but, on the contrary, insures his own eternal happiness, and but gives out again that which Allah entrusted to him for the behoof of man.
I happened one day, with European curiosity, to enquire what made the venerable man so venerated, and was told that, having suddenly gone mad, hekilled his wife, threw off his clothes, and then marched naked through the land—justice not interfering—for the mad are wise; and then, the violence of his madness over, had quietly sat down and made himself a sort of “octroi” upon passers by, after the fashion of blind Bartimæus, who sat begging at the gate. The explanation pleased me, and in future when I passed I laid up treasure in that mothless territory, where no thieves annoy, by giving copper coins; and was rewarded even here on earth, for once I heard an Arab say: “This Kaffir, here” (speaking of me) “fears neither God nor devil, yet I have seen him give to the old Saint; it may be, God, the merciful, may save him yet, if but to show His might.”
And so it is that Saints’ tombs stud the land with oven-shaped buildings with a horse-shoe arch, a palm tree growing by, either a date or a chamcerops humilis, in which latter case pieces of rag are hung to every leaf-stalk, perhaps as an advertisement of the tree’s sanctity or from some other cause. The place serves as a re-union for pious folk, for women who pray for children, for gossipers, and generally holds a midway place betwixt a church and club. In order that the faithful wayfarers, even though idiots, shall not err, in mountain passes, as in the gorge of Bosargun, at four cross roads, passes of rivers, and sometimes in the midst of desert tracts the traveller finds a number of small cairns, in shape like bottles, which show—according to the way they point—where the next Saint’s tomb lies; for it is good that man should pray and think about himself, especially upon a journey—prayer acts upon the purse; alms save the soul; and Saints, though dead, need money to perpetuate their fame.
After nine hours of alternating wind and heat we reached Imintanout, the eastern entrance of the pass which, crossing a valley of the Atlas, leads to Sus.So to speak Tarudant is within hail, three (some say two) days and we are there, if . . . but the if was destined to be mortal, as it proved. The straggling village almost fills the gorge through which the road enters the hill. Above it towers the Atlas; a little stream (then dry) ran through the place, which had an air between a village in Savoy, and a Mexican mining town lost in the Sierra Madre. Brown houses built of mud, stretches of Tabieh[80a]walls, the tops of which crowned with dead prickly bushes, steely and bluish looking in the setting sun, the houses generally castellated, the gardens hedged in with aloes, wherein grow blackberries, palms and pomegranates, flowers, fig-trees, and olives. Water in little channels of cement, ran through the gardens, making of them an Arab paradise. Further up the gorge the Mellah (Jewry), in which we catch a glimpse for the first time of the Atlas Jews, servile and industrious, wonderfully European-looking as to type, superior to the Arabs and Berbers in business capacity, and thus at once their masters and their slaves.
The Kaid’s house, perched upon a rock, I avoided like a plague spot, fearing to be recognised and sent back to Mogador, and made, instead, for the house of one Haj Addee, a Sheikh,[80b]which being interpreted may stand in his case for country gentleman.
The Sheikh has been in Mecca, Masar el Kahira (Cairo), carries a rosary, has some knowledge of the world (Mohammedan), and is not quite unlike those old world Hidalgos of La Mancha, they of the “Rocin flaco y galgo corredor,” whom Cervantes has immortalised in the person of Don Quixote.
Friends interested in my journey in Mogador had recommended the Sheikh to me as a safe man in whom to trust, before engaging myself in the recesses of the Atlas. So, riding to his house, I sent in Swani with a letter from an influential man in Mogador, and Haj Addee soon appeared, and, after asking me to dismount, led me by the hand to his guest house. This was an apartment composed of three small rooms, one serving as a bedroom, the second as a place in which to store our saddles, tent, and camping requisites, and the third, which had no roof, as sitting-room. All round the sitting-room ran a clay divan, a fire burned in one corner, and overhead the stars shone down upon us, especially the three last stars in the Great Bear’s tail, so that, take it for all in all, it was as pleasantly illuminated a drawing-room as any I have seen. Hard by the door stood an immense clay structure, shaped like a water barrel, which served for storing corn[81a]in during the winter, and in the spring broken to pieces when the corn was used.
Seated on the divan, I watched an enormous copper kettle try to boil upon a brass tripod[81b]in which a little charcoal glowed, whilst in a small brass dish a wick fed with raw mutton fat made darkness manifest.As I look round the room it strikes me that there seems to be a sort of dominant type of Mohammedan formed by religion, in the same way that in the north of Ireland you can distinguish a Catholic from a Protestant, across the street. Mohammed el Hosein, though of a different race, and from thousands of miles away, presents the perfect type of an Afridi, as depicted in the columns of the illustrated papers. Ali, our muleteer, with his thin legs, beard brushed into a fan, and coppery skin, might sit for the picture of a Pathan; it may be that an Oriental would discern a great resemblance between a Dutchman and a Portuguese which had lain dormant to our faculties, and if this was the case my theory would be as well confirmed as many other theories which have revolutionised the scientific world.
We talk of Mecca and Medina, of travelling from Jeddah, stretched in “shegedefs”[82]upon a camel’s back, of Gibel Arafat, the Caaba, and of the multitude of different classes of Mohammedans who swarm like bees, Hindoos and Bosnians, Georgians, Circassians, the dwellers in the Straits, and the Chinese believers, whom my host serves up all in a lump as Jawi, and says that they are little, yellow, all have one face, and that their mother in the beginning was a Djin. It appears that at the sacred places, the town of tents is of such vast dimensions that it is possible to lose yourself and wander for miles if you forget to take the bearings of your tent. It must be a curious sight to see the various nationalities, the greater part of whom have no means of communication other than a few pious sentences, and a verse or two from the Koran.
Swani, who is a double pilgrim, having twice beenin Mecca, comes out most learnedly as to nice points in Mohammedan theology. Though he can neither read nor write, and is, I fear, not all too strict in the mere practice of his religion, yet he can talk for hours upon the attributes of God, and as judiciously as if he had been a graduate of St. Bees, so well he knows the essence, qualities, power, majesty, might, glory, and every proper adjective to be applied. The object of his hopes is to induce me to perform the pilgrimage. He assures me that it is quite feasible, has even arranged for my disguise, and tells me that in Mecca he can take me to a friend’s house, who is as big a Kaffir as myself. His idea is that I shall go as a Circassian, which people I resemble as to type, and when I say, “What, if I fall upon a real Circassian?” he only answers, “That is impossible,” in the same manner as when asked what they would do if they discovered me; he answers, “they would not discover you, you look so like a man from Fez.” What annoys him is that I make no apparent progress in the language, and I fear that I shall have to take a longer pilgrimage before I am fit, even with such a guide, to throw the stones on Gibel Arafat. Sometimes our talk ran on the wonders of the West; the steamships in which the pilgrims sail from Tangier to Jeddah, and on board of one of which, our host informs us, once when he was praying, the Kaffir Captain touched him on the arm, and, pointing to the compass, informed him he was not head on to the proper point. This conduct seems to have impressed Haj Addee, and he remarks, “God, in his mercy, may yet release that captain from the fire.” As we were talking, neighbours dropped in, in the familiar Eastern way, and sat quiet and self-contained, occasionally drinking from one of the two long-necked and porous water-jars, known as “Baradas,” or the “coolers,” which stand, their wooden stoppers tied to them with a palmetto cord, on eachside the divan. Swani concocts the tea, using the aforesaid weighty copper kettle, a pewter cone-shaped tea-pot, made in Germany, a tin tea-caddy, painted the colour of orange marmalade, with crude blue flowers, which kind of merchandise Birmingham sends to Morocco, to be sold at one-and-sixpence, to show how much superior are our wares to those of all the world. The host knocks off great pieces from a loaf of cheap[84]French sugar with the key of the house, drawing it from his belt, and hammering lustily, as the key weighs about four ounces, and is eight or nine inches long.
Imintanout being, as it were, the gate of Sus, and the end of the first stage of our journey, we ask most anxiously as to the condition of the road. The way we learn is easy, so easy that trains of laden camels pass every day, and the whole distance across the mountains is a short two days. So far so good, but when we intimate our intention of starting early next morning, then bad news comes out.
It appears the tribe called Beni Sira, sons of burnt fathers, as our host refers to them, have stopped the pass, not that they are bad men, at least our host is sure of this, or lives too near them to venture on a criticism, but because they are dissatisfied with the new governor recently appointed, and wish to get him into bad odour with the Sultan by causing trouble. It appears those mis-begotten folk have fired upon a party only the day before, and wounded a Jewish merchant, who is laid up in a house not far from where we sit. A caravan of twenty mules was set upon last week, two men were wounded and the goods all carried off. A most ingenious system of proving that the governor is incompetent to preserve order, and therefore must be changed.
Suspecting that the story was untrue, and onlygot up to prevent my entering the Sus, I sent two messengers, one to see the Jewish merchant, and tell me if he is really wounded, and another to a Sheikh, asking if a traveller, going to pray in Tarudant, and skilled in medicine, can pass that way. The report of fighting seriously alarms our muleteers, and even Swani, though brave enough, looks grave at having to fight so far away from home. Haj Addee—to show goodwill, or to impress us with his power—offers, should the local Sheikh of the Beni Sira return an unfavourable reply, to get his men together and fight his way right through the pass. I thank him with effusion, but resolve not to place myself alone in the middle of a tribal battle without a rifle, on a half-tired horse, and deprived even of a Kodak with which to affright the nimble adversary.
And so I lose a day, or perhaps gain it, talking to the curious people, and prescribing wisely for ophthalmia; dividing Seidlitz powders into small portions to be taken at stated times to serve as aphrodisiacs, and watching an incantation which seems to cure our host of rheumatism.
Haj Addee was a sort of “Infeliz,” as the Spaniards call a man of his peculiar temperament. I am certain that in whatever business he entered into he must have failed, he had so honest a disposition, and his lies were so unwisely gone about, they would not have deceived a Christian child. His rosary, each bead as big as a large pea, was ever in his hand; he said it was made from the horn of that rare beast, the unicorn, and he had brought it with a price at Mecca, from a “Sherif so holy that he could not lie.” It looked to me like rhinoceros horn, and so, perhaps, the Sherif had lied less than he had intended when he sold the beads. In the middle of the string were four blue beads, and between these four beads a piece of ivory standing up like a cone, andcalled “el Madhna,”[86a]that is the “erect one.” Besides the “Madhna” there was a little comb, shaped like a stable mane comb, and made of horn, which dangled from the rosary, and which Moors use to comb their beards after performing their ablutions, and which they seldom carry in Morocco, except they have performed the pilgrimage.
Haj Addee suffered from rheumatism in the left shoulder. This he called simply “el burd,” “the cold,” and complained that he had exhausted all lawful medicine and was about to try an incantation.[86b]So to us entered a “fakir”—that is, a holy man—fat and white-bearded, and with the half-foolish, half-cunning look, so often to be found in “holy men” who are professors of some faith either inferior to, or differing from, our own. The man of God gave me a scowl, and, I fancy, saw I was a misbeliever, then sat down, after the fashion of his class, in the best seat, and, mumbling something, drew out a dagger and wrote upon it, with the juice of a plant he carried in his hand, some mystic characters. The master of the house, together with a friend, stood up and held two pieces of split cane about a yard in length. Both had the air the Italians call “compunto,” that is, they looked like people walking down the aisle of a crowded church (as if they trod on eggs) after partaking of the Holy Communion, and conscious that it is not impossible they may have eaten and drunk their own damnation, and that before a crowd of witnesses.
The Levite, sitting in a corner, kept on muttering, and underneath the cane rapidly passed the cabalistic dagger to and fro, just in the middle of the reeds,touching them lightly, as the dagger moved almost like a shuttle in his hands. The look of concentration and air of being accomplices after the fact was kept up for almost five minutes, and quite insensibly I find I joined in it, and, looking at Lutaif (a Christian, if such a man there be) at Swani and Mohammed el Hosein, I found that they too were fascinated, much like a rabbit in a snake-house moves towards the snake.
It seems, of all the forces which move mankind, humbug is the strongest, for humbugs are always taken in by humbug, and the very men who practice on the folly of mankind fall easy victims to the manœuvres of their brothers in the art. Gradually the movement of the dagger grew slower, then stopped, and then the mystery man struck the patient gently with the blade upon the arm, broke the two canes across, tied them together in a bundle, and put them on a ledge just where the thatch is fastened to the mud walls of the house.
Admirable to observe the look of faith of all the standers-by. If ever I witnessed a religious action, that is, taking religio and superstitio (as I think the Romans did) to be synonymous, I did so then. Even the Salvation Army, at its most unreasonable, never succeeded in bringing such a look of ovine faith upon the faces of its legionaries. The patient says that he is greatly benefited, and for the first time in my life I see a religious ceremony begun, continued, and concluded (with the result successful), and without apparent sign of a collection being taken up.
Faith should not be divorced from its true spouse, the offertory. What man has brought together, even the act of God should not disjoin, for faith is so ethereal that, left alone, it pines and languishes in a hard world, unless sustained by pennies in a plate, in the same manner as the soul, which, as we all know (nowadays), is eternal, takes its departure whenthe body dies, and lies unquickened if the head receives a knock.
The function over, we sit and talk, look at one another’s arms, lie as to our shooting powers, and, after careful examination of my pistol, to my astonishment, our host produces a large-sized Smith and Wesson revolver, which it appears he bought in Kahira (Cairo), and seems to think the most important result of all his pilgrimage. Hours pass, and still no messenger, and a fat Saint[88]rolls in, and salutes Swani as an acquaintance of the pilgrimage. They kiss and embrace, hugging one another and alternately placing their beards over one another’s right and left shoulders. As Burton observes, the Arabs are by far the most emotional of the Oriental races. Poetry, or a well-told lamentable tale, moves them to tears, and friends who meet often weep for joy.
Swani privately imparts to me, in Pigeon Spanish, which he tells the Saint is Turkish, that the Saint is a humbug, and that when they last met he would hardly speak to him, for he (Swani) was working as a sailor on board an English pilgrim steamer, and dressed “a la inglesa, saber del trousers, catchy sea boots y todo.”
Still waiting for the messenger, I fall to observing the difference between the Arabs and the Berber race. It is the fashion amongst travellers in Morocco and Algeria to exalt the Berbers, and run down the Arabs. “The noble Shillah race” has become quite a catch-word with every one who sees a Berber and writes down his impressions. Curious that no one talks of the noble “Tuareg race,” yet the Tuareg’s are Berber of the Berbers, and their language, known as Tamashek, merely a dialect of the Berberlanguage, which spreads over the vast area of territory from Tripoli to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Mediterranean to Timbuctoo. Undoubtedly the oldest known inhabitants of the countries which now are called the Barbary States, they seem to have kept their type and customs unchanged since first we hear of them in history. The Arabs found them in possession of all Morocco, and drove them into the mountains and the desert beyond, and though they forced Islam upon them, still the two peoples are anti-pathetic to one another, have blended little, and you can tell them from one another at a glance.
The Arab, one of the finest types of all the races of mankind, tall, thin, fine eyes, aquiline noses, spare frames; walking with dignity; a horseman, poet; treacherous and hospitable; a gentleman, and yet inquisitive; destroying, as Ibn Jaldun assures us, the civilisation of every land they conquer, and yet capable of great things, witness Granada and Damascus; a metaphysician and historian; sensual and yet abstemious; a people loveable, and yet not good to “lippen to,” as Scotchmen say; and yet perhaps of all the Orientals those who have most impressed themselves upon the world.
The Berbers, short, squat figures, high cheekbones, small eyes, square frames, great walkers, only becoming horsemen by necessity, as when the Arabs have forced them to the desert; as fond of mountains as the Arabs are of plains; in general agriculturists, whereas the Arab in his true sphere prefers a pastoral life; the Berbers, little known outside their mountains, look rather Scottish in appearance, that is, Scotch as ordinary mortals see that race, and not as seen through “kailyard” spectacles. It may be that the Berbers are a noble race, but personally I should apply the adjective “noble” to the Arabs, and to the Berbers give some such qualifying phrasesas “relatively honest,” “tenacious,” or perhaps, best of all, “bourgeois,” which, to my way of thinking, best expresses the characteristics of those Berber tribes who, in the north side of the Atlas, are dominated by the Sultan’s power. Where they touch one another to the south upon the confines of the desert, it would be hard to give the palm for savagery; and the great Berber tribes, Ait Morghed and Ait[90a]Hannu, have become practically Arabs in their customs and their use of horses. The Tuaregs,[90b]on the other hand, have remained absolutely Berber, and indiscriminately attack Arabs and Christians, and all who cross their way.
As to the name of Berber, ethnologists, after the fashion of all scientists, have disagreed, taken one another by the beards, and freely interchanged (and I suppose as faithfully received) the opprobrious names which render the disputes of men of science and of theologians so amusing to those who stand aside and put their tongues out at both sorts of men.
Breber, Baraba, Berber, all three phases of the word are found. Some learned men derive the word from the Greek, and make it simply stand for Barbarian. Others, again, as stoutly make it Arab, and say it means “People of the Land of Ber.”[90c]
Ibn Jaldun (always an innovator) has his theory, which seems just as good as any other man’s. He makes the Berbers to descend not from Shem, but Ham (Cam as the Arabs call him), and relates that Ham had a son called Ber, whose son was called Mazirg, and that from Ber came the Beranis, who, in time, and by corruption of the word, turned into Berberes. If not convincing, the theory shows invention, and smacks (to me) of the derivations I have heard hacked out, so to speak, with a scalping knife round the camp-fire; for, uncivilised and semi-civilised men waste as much time in seeking to find out how the form of words got crystallised as if they had diplomas from their universities.
Strangely enough, the people we call Berbers do not know the name, and call themselves Tamazirght, that is, the noble. Their language is called Amzirght, and resembles closely the Tamashek spoken by the Tuaregs, the dialect of the tribes of the Riff Mountains, and that of the Kabyles of Algeria.[91a]The Arabs neither use the word Tamazirght nor the word Berber, but call the Berber tribes “Shluoch,” that is, the outcasts; the verb is “Shallaha,” and the term used for the speech Shillah,[91b]a sort of Shibbolethin Europeans’ mouths, for very few even of those (who, like the Germans and the Spaniards can pronounce the guttural) ever attain to the pronunciation of the Arabic and Berber semi-guttural, semi-pectoral aspiration of this word.
Till the last twenty years the greater portion of the Berber tribes, although Mohammedans, owned but a nominal allegiance to the Sultan of Morocco, and lived almost independently under their Omzarghi (lords), Amacrani (great one), and Amrgari (elders), but nowadays, even in Sus and in the desert, the Sultan’s authority is much more felt. In fact, until quite lately they lived as their forefathers—the Getulians, Melano-getulians, and Numidians—lived before them, with the exception that being driven to the mountains they had greatly lost the horsemanship which made them famous to the ancient world. Even to-day it is not rare to see them ride, just as the Roman writers said the ancient Numidian cavalry rode, without a saddle or a bridle, and guiding their horses with a short stick, which they alternately change from hand to hand to make them turn.
The words Mazyes, Maziriciæ and Mazyces occur in many Greek and Roman writers, and seem not impossibly to be derived from Amazirght, or from Mazig, the most ancient form known of their appellation. Leo Africanus, himself a Moor,[92]calls them Amarigh, and says of them “they are strong, terrible, and robust men, who fear neither cold nor snow; their dress is a tunic of wool over the bare flesh, and above the tunic they wear a mantle. Round their legs they have twisted thongs, and this serves themalso for shoes. They never wear anything on the head at any season; they rear sheep, mules and asses, and their mountains have few woods. They are the greatest thieves, and traitors, and assassins in the world—”[93]
Even to-day this picture of them holds good in most particulars. The Berbers of the mountains seldom wear turbans or anything but a string tied round their foreheads. Generally they have a linen shirt to-day, but often wear the tunic as Leo Africanus says, and now and then one sees them with the twisted leg bandages like Pifferari. As to their moral character, after some small experience, I rather hold to the view of Leo Africanus, than that of Mr. Walter Harris. One thing is certain, that they cannot lie more than the Arabs do, but then the Arabs lie so prettily, with so much circumstance, and such nice choice of words, that it all comes to be a matter of individual taste, for there are those who had rather be deceived with civil manners by an Italian, than be cheated brutally by a North Briton, for the love of God.
The first of all the tribes we hear of in history as living in Morocco are the Autoloti of Ptolemy, who seem to be the Holots, who now live in El Gharb, that is, the country between Tangier and the Sebu. In Hanno’s Periplus, the same word occurs, and the description of their country seems to tally with the territory where they live.
Luis de Marmol, who was long prisoner with the Moors in the sixteenth century, places a people called Holots, near to Cape Azar. Now it is certain that the Holots are Berbers, and the testimony of the writers referred to goes to prove the long continuance of the Berbers in the land, and also seems to prove that in ancient times, as now, the Berbers were notnomads, as the Arabs were, but stationary, as they are to-day. Graberg di Hemso, in his curious “Speechio Geographico di Marocco,” says, “Questi Mazighi della Tingitana fabbricarono, ne quella costa in vincenanza del capo Bianco la citta di Mazighan, che porta ad oggi il loro nome di nazione.” He quotes no authority for his statement, and it is certainly at variance with fact, for Mazagan was founded by the Portuguese in 1506, and it is called Djedida,i.e., New Town, by the Arabs; still the name of Mazagan may yet commemorate an older town under the style of Mazighan.
Be all that as it may, the Berbers inhabited Morocco ages before the Arabs conquered the land, and gave them the religion of the sword. Tradition says they were once Christians, and certainly in their embroideries and decorations the cross is used. Yet, looking at the matter from an artistic point of view, discounting (for the nonce) morality, the cross, and honesty, it seems to me that noble is not a term to use in speaking of the Berber, and I submit it better fits a race such as the Arabs, who, in the persons of their horses and themselves, have done so much to refine the type of all those peoples, equine and biped, whom they have come across.
As night was falling, and a whistling wind springing up from the mountains, the messenger appeared bringing the news that the Sheikh refused to let anyone cross the pass, and that there had been a pretty hot exchange of shots that afternoon between the men of the Beni Sira, and a troop of cavalry crossing from Sus. This was a stopper over all, for it was evident we could not force our way through a road winding by precipices, held by a mountain tribe. Remembering the Arab proverb which runs, “Always ask counsel from your wife, but never act on what she says,” I held a long palaver with Haj Addee, Lutaifand my men, on what was best to do. Two courses were now open to me, either to wheel about and follow the shore road by Agadhir, or else to try the upper and more difficult pass to Sus, which starts above Amsmiz. This place was situated about two days’ journey further on, the pass, according to all reports, took three good days to cross, and having crossed it, we should still be a long day from Tarudant.
Lutaif had no opinion, and as the rest all counselled Agadhir, except Haj Swani, who gave it his opinion that he would go wherever I did, I “opted” for Amsmiz, arguing that to turn back would certainly dishearten my companions, and if the Howara had been fighting a week ago, they would be fighting still, and thinking that even if taking the upper road I failed, I should see more of the interior of the Atlas, than I was likely to do by any other route. After having cursed the Beni Sira thoroughly in all the languages we knew, drank gallons of green tea, sat for an hour or two listening to stories of the Djinoun, smoked cigarettes and Kiff, and generally tried to imagine we were not disappointed, we retired to bed, so as before first light to be upon the road. Our bedroom had no window, and gave on theal frescodrawing room I have referred to; all round the walls were little recesses in which to put things, made in the thickness of the wall, pouches and powder horns hung from goats’ horns forced underneath the thatch, three long “jezails,” all hooped with silver, one with a Spanish two-real piece, depending from the trigger-guard, stood in the corner, a lantern made of tin with coloured glass, gave a red light, upon the floor of mud a Rabat carpet in pattern like a kaleidoscope or Joseph’s coat, was spread; nothing of European manufacture was there except a large-sized (navy pattern) Smith and Wesson pistol, which, hanging by a red worsted cord upon the wall, seemed to project the shadow of the cross upon the room.
Myjourney all next day lay through low hills of reddish argillaceous earth, cut into gullies here and there by the winter rains, and clothed with sandaracs, Suddra (Zizyphus lotus) and a few mimosas. The hills sloped upwards to the wall-like Atlas, and on the left the desert-looking plain of Morocco, broken but by the flat-topped hill known as the Camel’s Neck (Hank el Gimel), and bounded by the mountains above Demnat, and the curve the Atlas range makes to the north-east so as to almost circle round Morocco city. We search our hearts, that is, I search my own and the others’ hearts and try to persuade myself that we have acted prudently in not attempting the Imintanout road. But when did prudence console anybody? Rashness at times may do so, but the prudent generally (I think) are more or less ashamed of the virtue they profess. The Moors, of course, were glad we had risked nothing, for though no cowards when the danger actually presents itself, indeed, in many cases (as at the battles with the Spaniards in 1861) showing more desperate courage than anyone except the Soudanese, still they are so imaginative, or what you please, that if men talk of danger they will take a five days’ journey to avoid the places where hypothetic peril lurks. Mohammed el Hosein, being in his character of ex-slave dealer, what the French call a “lapin,” talked of his adventures in the past, told how he had smuggled slaves into the coast towns almost before the Christian consul’s eyes, sungShillah songs in a high, quavering falsetto, and boasted of his prowess in the saddle, occasionally bursting into a suppressed chuckle at the idea of taking a Christian into Tarudant.
Almost before we were aware of it, on going down a slope between some bushes, we found ourselves right in the middle of a crowded market. These country markets are a feature of Morocco, and, I think, of almost every Arab country. Often they are held miles away from any house, but generally on an upland open space with water near. When not in use they reminded me of the “rodeos,” on to which the Gauchos, in La Plata, used to drive their cattle to count, to mark, part out, or to perform any of the various duties of an “estanciero’s”[97]life. The markets usually are known by the day of the week on which they are held, as Sok el Arba, Sok el Thelatta, el Jamiz, and so forth; the Arabs using Arba, Tnain, Thelatta, “one, two, three” etc., to designate their days. This market, in particular, I knew to be the Sok es Sebt, but thought we had been some distance from it, and all my assurance was required to make my way amongst at least two thousand people with the dignity which befits a Moorish gentleman upon a journey. Arabs and Berbers, Jews and Haratin (men of the Draa province, of mixed race) were there, all talking at the fullest pitch of strident voices, all armed to the teeth. Ovens with carcases of sheep roasting entire inside them, cows, camels, lines of small brown tents made to be packed upon a mule and called “Kituns,” dust, dust, and more dust, produced the smell, as of wild beasts, which emanates from Eastern crowds. Moors from Morocco city in white fleecy haiks I carefully avoided, as being my equals in supposititious rank,and, therefore, likely to address me. Berbers in striped brown rags, and wrapped in the curious mantle, called an “achnif” in Shillah, made of black wool with fringes and an orange-coloured eye, about two feet in length, woven into the back, abounded; through them I shoved my horse, not even looking down when the poor fellows lifted my cloak and kissed the hem, and, passing through majestically, I heard some mutter, “That Sherif is very proud for one so thin,” fat being amongst Moors a sign of wealth, as it was evidently amongst the Jews, if we are to take the testimony of the Old Testament as worthy of belief.
To ride right through a market and pass on would have looked suspicious, as markets in Morocco form a sort of medium for exchange of news, in the same manner that in old times the churchyard was a kind of club; witness the story of the elder who was heard to say—“he would not give all the sermons in the world for five good minutes of the churchyard clash.” So, after having gone about a quarter of a mile, we got under some olive trees (zeitun, from whence the Spanish aceituna, an olive), and, sitting in the shade, sent Swani to the market to buy some “Schwah,” that is, some of the carcase of a sheep roasted whole “en barbecue.” Various poor brothers in Mohammed came to assure themselves of my complete good health; but Mohammed el Hosein informed them the Sherif was ill, and, giving them some copper coins, they testified to the existence of the one God, and hoped that He might in His mercy soon make me well. Being schooled as to the form to be observed, I looked up slowly, and, raising one hand, muttered as indistinctly as I could that God was great, and that we all were in His hands. This pleased Mohammed el Hosein so much that when we were alone he assured me I must have been born a Sherif, and could I but speak Arabic a little less barbarously that our journey wouldhave been productive, as Sherifs make it a practice, whilst giving small copper to the poor, to cadge upon their own account from the better classes, of course for Allah and His Holy Prophet’s sake. Lutaif, who in his character of Syrian, talked almost incessantly to anyone we met, elicited that this particular market called “Sok es Sebt,” the “Sixth Day Market,” is one of four held in Morocco on a Saturday, thus showing that the Jews have got most of the trade into their hands, and do not care that markets should be held upon their holy day. We tore the “Schwah” between our fingers, in the “name of God”; it tasted much like leather cooked in suet; we passed the ablutionary water over our hands, moving them to and fro to dry, drank our green tea, and were preparing for a siesta when it was rumoured that an English Jew was soon expected to arrive. Having still less acquaintance with Yiddish than with Arabic, and being certain that the English Israelite would soon detect me, and fall on one shoulder exclaiming “S’help me, who would have thought of meeting a fellow-countryman out ’ere!” I saddled up and started as majestically as I felt I could upon my way. The start was most magnificent, Swani and Mohammed helping to arrange my clothes when I had clambered to my seat, and all went well with the exception that no one happening to hold Lutaif’s off stirrup, and the huge Moorish mule saddle, called a “Sirijah,” being so slackly girthed, that it is almost impossible to scale it all alone, he fell into the dust, and Ali coming up to help with a broad grin received a hearty “Jejerud Din!” (“Curse your religion!”), which caused a coolness during the remainder of the journey. Lutaif, though a good Christian and as pious as are most dwellers on the Lebanon, yet came from the country where, as Arabs say, “the people all curse God,” referring to the imprecationon their respective creeds, which is most faithfully taken and received between Maronite and Druse, Christian and Moslem, and all the members of the various jarring sects who dwell under the shadow of the cedars on those most theologic hills. Nestling into the gorges of the hills, and crowning eminences, were scattered villages of the true Atlas type, built all of mud, flat roofed, the houses rising one over the other like a succession of terraces or little castles, and being of so exactly the same shade as the denuded hills on which they stand as to be almost impossible to make out till you are right upon them. At times so like is village to hill, and hill to village, that I have taken an outstanding mound of earth to be a house, and many times have almost passed the village, not seeing it was there.
Riding along and dangling my feet out of the stirrups to make the agony of the short stirrup leather, hung behind the girths, endurable, it struck me what peaceful folks the Arabs really were. Here was a traveller almost totally unarmed, for the Barcelona and Marseilles “snap-haunces” we had borrowed at the Palm-Tree House were hardly to be called offensive weapons; without a passport, travelling in direct defiance of the Treaty of Madrid, in Arab clothes, asserting that he was an Arab or a Turk (as seemed convenient). So, unattended, for defensive purposes, I rode along quite safely, or relatively safely, except from all the risks that wait upon the travellers in any country of the world, such as arise from stumbling horses and the like, fools, and the act of God.
What was it that stopped a band of Arabs on the lookout for plunder? What stood between us and a party of the “Noble Shillah race”? Either or both could easily have plundered us and thrown our bodies into some silo and no one would have known. The truth is, in Morocco, when one reflects upon the inconveniences of the country, the lonely roads, the places apparentlydesigned by Providence to make men brigands, and the fact that almost every Arab owns a horse and is armed at least with a stout knife, that the inhabitants are either cowardly to a degree, are law-abiding to a fault, or else deprived by nature of initiative to such extent as to be quite Arcadian in the foolish way in which they set about to rob. When I remembered Mexico not twenty years ago, before Porfirio Diaz turned the brigands, who used to swarm on every road, into paid servants of the Government, men on a journey from the Rio Grande to San Luis Potosi all made their wills and started weighted down with Winchesters, pistols and bowie-knives, besides a stout machete stuck through their saddle-girths. So Morocco seemed to me a perfect paradise.
In the republic of the Eagle and the Cactus, the tramways running to the bullfights at Tacubaya frequently were held up by armed horsemen and the passengers plundered of everything they had about them. Stage coaches often were attacked by “road agents” and everyone inside of them stripped naked, although the robbers, being caballeros, generally distributed some newspapers amongst them to cover up their nakedness. In the old monarchy, murder was pretty frequent, but it was chiefly the result of private vengeance, and though the tribes fought bloody battles now and then, a travelling stranger seldom was molested by them, except he got in the way.
Real highway robbery seemed not to flourish in Morocco, perhaps because the atmosphere of monarchy was less congenial to it than the free air of a republic, though that could surely not have been the case, as virtue is a plant that grows from the top downwards, and both the President and Sultan, at the time I write about, are robbers to the core.
Occasionally in the Shereefian Empire, a Jew returning from a fair was set upon and spoiled, andnow and then in lowered voices, as you jogged along the road, were pointed out to you the place where Haramin[102a]had slain a man thirty or forty years ago.
This is the case in all those portions of Morocco where Christians travel; that is to Fez, to Tetuan, from Mazagan to the city of Morocco, and generally about Tangier, the coast towns and the Gharb.[102b]Outside those spheres the case is different; and in the Riff, the Sus, Wad Nun, or even a few miles outside of Mequinez, a Christian’s life, or even that of a Mohammedan from India, Persia or the East, would not be worth a “flus.”[102c]We rested for our mid-day halt upon the open plain under the shadow of a great rock, the heat too great to eat, and passed the time smoking and drinking from our porous water-jars, until the “enemy,” as the Arabs call the Sun, sank down a little; then in the cool we went on through a wilderness of cactus and oleanders, almond and fig trees, with palms and apricots, till sandy paths zigzagging between aloe hedges with a few tapia walls backed by a ruined castle, betokened we were near Asif-el-Mal. Asif means river in Shillah, and at the foot of the crumbling walls a river ran, making things green and most refreshing to the eyes after ten hours of fighting with the enemy, enduring dust, and kicking at our animals after the fashion which all men adopt upon a journey; not that it helps the animals along, but seems to be a vent for the impatience of the traveller.Norias[103a]creak, a camel with a donkey and a woman harnessed to one of them, water pours slowly out of the revolving “Alcuzas,”[103b]and at the trough the maidens of the village stand waiting to fill their water-jars, shaped like an amphora, which they carry on the shoulders with a strap braced round their hands. Asif-el-Mal boasts a Mellah, and Jews at once came out to offer to trade with us, to talk, and hear the news. Intelligent young Jews, Moisés, Slimo, and Mordejai with Baruch, and all the other names, familiar to the readers of the Old Testament, flock round us. All can read and write, can keep accounts, as well as if they had been born in Hamburg; most have ophthalmia, some are good-looking, pale with great black eyes, and every one of them seems to be fashioned with an extra joint about the back. Yet hospitable, civil and a link with Europe, which they have never seen; but about which they read, and whose affairs they follow with the keenest interest, all knowing Gladstone’s name and that of Salisbury; all longing for the day when they can put on European clothes and blossom out arrayed after the gorgeous fashion of the tribe in Mogador. Each of them wears a love-lock hanging upon his shoulder, and, without doubt, if they were but a little bit more manly-looking, they would be as fine young men as you could wish to see.
Their race almost controls the town, Berbers are few and hardly any Arabs but the Sheikh and his immediate following live in the place. A proof the land is good, the soil productive, and the water permanent; for when did Jews set up their tabernacles on an unproductive soil, in a poor town, or follow thefortunes of any one who was not rich? Their chief, Hassan Messoud, a venerable man, dressed in a long blue gown, a spotted belcher pocket-handkerchief over his head and hanging down behind in a most unbecoming style, advanced to greet us. Perhaps he was the finest Eastern Jew I ever saw; a very Moses in appearance, as he might have been on Sinai a little past his prime, and yet before the ingratitude of those he served had broken him. Beside him walks his daughter, a Rebecca, or Zohara, bearing fresh butter in a lordly tin dish, and bread baked upon pebbles, with the impression of the stones upon the underside. Such bread the chosen people have left in Spain, and still in Old Castille amongst the “Cristianos Rancios,” who hate the very name of Jew, and think that the last vestige of their customs has long left Spain, the self-same bread is eaten at Easter, if I remember rightly; and so, perhaps, the true believer (Christian this time) unwittingly bakes bread which yet may damn him black to all eternity.
Hassan comes quickly into the tent, and bids us welcome in Jewish Arabic; and waiting cautiously till even our own Moors have left the tent, breaks into Spanish and asks me of what nationality I am. I tell him from “God’s country,” and he says, “Ingliz,” to which I answer, “Yes, or Franciz, for both are one.” He grins, squatting close to the door of the tent, servile, but dignified, full six feet high, his black beard turning grey, and hands large, fat, and whitish, and which have never done hard work. We talk, and then Hassan takes up his parable. Glory to Allah he is rich, and all the Governors are his dear friends, that is they owe him money; and as he talks the old-time Spanish rhyme comes to my memory, which, talking of some Jews who came to see a certain king, speaks of their honeyed words, and how they praised their people and boasted of their might.
“Despues vinieron Don Salomon y Don Ezequiel,Con sus dulces palabras parecen la miel,Hacen gran puja, de los de Israel.”
“Despues vinieron Don Salomon y Don Ezequiel,Con sus dulces palabras parecen la miel,Hacen gran puja, de los de Israel.”
And yet Hassan was but easy of dispense, wearing the clothes of an ordinary Morocco Jew, with nothing to indicate his wealth.
As we sat talking to him of the exchange in Europe; about the Rothschilds, Sassoons, Oppenheims, and others of the “chosen” who bulk largely in the money columns of the daily press of Europe (all of whom he knew by name), and interchanging views about the late Lord Beaconsfield, whom Hassan knew as Benjamin ben Israel, the daughters of God’s folk came out upon the house-tops, dressed in red and yellow, with kerchiefs on their heads, eyes like the largest almonds, lips like full-blown pomegranates, and looked with pride upon their headman talking to the Sherif or Christian Caballer, whichever he might be, on equal terms. Strange race, so intellectual, so quick of wit, so subtle, and yet without the slightest dignity of personal bearing; handsome, and yet without the least attraction, conquering the Arabs as they conquer Saxons, Latins, or all those with whom they come in contact upon that modern theatre of war—the Stock Exchange. Hassan Messoud having protested that by the God of Abraham we were all welcome, retired and left us to pitch our tent upon a dust-heap in a courtyard, between some ruined houses and the village wall.
Under the moonlight, the distant plain looked like a vast, steely-blue sea, the deep, red roads all blotted out, the palms and olives standing up exactly as dead stalks of corn stand up in an October wheat-field. The omnipresent donkeys and camels of the East hobbled or straying in the foreground beneath the walls, and the mysterious, silent, white-robed figures wandering about like ghosts, the town appeared to me to look as some Morisco village must have looked in Spain when the Mohammedans possessed the land, and villages brown, ruinous, and hedged about with cactuslike Asif-el-Mal, clung to the crags, and nestled in the valleys of the Sierra de Segura, or the Alpujarra.
At daybreak, Hassan Messoud appeared with breakfast at our tent, olives and meat in a sauce of oil and pepper, not appetising upon an empty stomach, but not to be refused without offence. Then, throwing milk upon the ground from a small gourd, he blessed us, and invoked the God of Israel to shield us on our way. A worthy, kindly, perhaps usurious, but most hospitable Israelite, not without guile (or property), a type of those Jews of the Middle Ages from whom Shakespeare took Shylock, and in whose hands the lords, knights, squires, and men-at-arms were as a Christian stockbroker, cheat he as wisely as he can, is to-day in the hands of any Jew who, a few months ago, retailed his wares in Houndsditch; but who, the Exchange attained to, walks its precincts as firmly as it were Kodesh, and he a priest after the order of Melchizedec. Riding along the trail which runs skirting the foothills of the Atlas, and forces us to dive occasionally into the deep dry “nullah,” for there are only six or seven bridges in all Morocco, and none near the Atlas, the vegetation changes, and again we pass dwarf rhododendrons, arbutus, and kermes-oak, and enter into a zone of plants like that of southern Spain, with the exception that here the mignonette becomes a bush, and common golden rod grows four feet high, with a thick woody stem. White poplars, walnuts, elms, and a variety of ash are planted round the houses. From the eaves hang strings of maize cobs; bee-hives like those the Moors left in Spain, merely a hollow log of wood, or roll of cork, lie in the gardens; grape vines climb upon the trees, producing grapes, long, rather hard, claret-coloured, and aromatic, the best, I think, in all the world, and which have fixed themselves upon the memory of my palate, as have the oranges of Paraguay.
About mid-day, upon a little eminence, we sight the tower of the Kutubieh, the glory of Morocco; but the city is, so to speak, hull down, and the white tower seems to hang suspended in the air without foundations; indeed, it looks so thin at the great distance from which we see it, as to be but a mere white line standing up in the plain and pointing heavenwards, that is, if towers built by false prophets do not point to hell. All day my horse, really the best I ever rode in all Morocco, had been uneasy, wanting to lie down; so disregarding the advice of Mohammed el Hosein to prick him with my knife and pray to God, somewhat prosaically I got off, and, unsaddling him, found his shoulder fearfully swollen, and understood how I came possessed of a horse the like of which few Christians, even for money, get hold of from a Moor. I saw at once he had a fistulous sore right through the withers; incurable without an operation and a long rest. Then I believed what Mohammed el Hosein had told me, that the horse was from the other side of the Atlas and had been used in ostrich-hunting, for a better and more fiery beast I never rode, and though thin, rough, and in the worst condition, had he been sound-backed, quite fit to carry me to Timbuctoo.
The Arabs have an idea upon a journey that a man should dismount as seldom as he can. They say dismounting and remounting tires the horse more than a league of road, they therefore sit the livelong day without dismounting from their seat. The Gauchos, on the contrary, say it helps a horse to get off now and then and lift the saddle for a moment, loosening the girth so that the air may get between the saddle and the back. This the Moors hold to be anathema, and Spaniards, Mexicans, and most horsemen of the south agree that the saddle should not be shifted till the horse is cool, on pain of getting a sore back. Who shall decide when horsemen disagree?However, the Gauchos all girth very tightly, and the Arabs scarcely draw the girth at all, their saddles repose on seven (the number is canonical) thick saddle cloths, and are kept in their place more by the breastplate than the girth. It may be therefore that, given the loose girth, short stirrup leathers, and their own flowing clothes, personal convenience has more to do with the custom of not getting off and on than regard for the welfare of their beast. The Arabs in Morocco, though fond of horses, treat them roughly and foolishly; at times they cram them with unnecessary food, at times neglect them; their feet they almost always let grow too long, their legs they spoil by too tight hobbling, and if upon a journey their horse tires they ride him till he drops.
Across the mountains and amongst the wilder desert tribes, this is not so, and travellers all agree that the wild Arab really loves his horse; but he has need of him to live, whereas inside Morocco horses are used either for war or luxury, or because the man who rides them cannot afford a mule. The pacing mule, throughout North Africa, is as much valued as he was in Europe in the Middle Ages, and commands a higher price than any horse; yet whilst allowing that he is dogged as a Nonconformist, on the road, sober and comfortable, to my eye, a man wrapped in a white burnouse, perched on a saddle almost as large as the great bed of Ware, looks fitter to be employed to guard a harem than to enjoy the company of the houris inside. Necessity (in days gone by) has often forced me to ride horses with a “flower”[108]on their backs or with a sore which rendered every step they made as miserable to me as it was hell to them; but as on these occasions I rode either before an IndianMalon,[109a]or for the dinner of a whole camp, so I at once determined that, notwithstanding any risk, I would purvey me a new horse at the next stopping place. As it turned out, the changing horses and the talk which ensued, as the owner of the horse and I tried to deceive each other about our beasts, was the occasion of my never reaching Tarudant. At least I think so, and if it was, some better traveller will do that which I failed in doing, write a much better book than any I could write, and if he be a practical and pushful man spare neither horses on the road, nor stint the public of one iota of his “facts,” for to the pushful is the kingdom of the earth. As to what sort of kingdom they have made of it, it is beyond the scope of this poor diary to enquire.
We crossed the Wad el Kehra, and early in the afternoon tied up our animals under a fig-tree, with a river running hard by, a stubble field in front, and Amsmiz itself crowning a hill upon our right. Amongst the “algarobas,”[109b]fig-trees and poplars, swallows flit, having come south, or perhaps migrated north from some more southern land.
At the entrance of the town stood the palace of the Kaid, an enormous structure made of mud and painted light rose-pink, but all in ruins, the crenellated walls a heap of rubbish, the machicolated towers blown up with gunpowder. The Kaid, it seems, oppressed the people of the town and district beyond the powers of even Arabs and Berbers to endure; so they rebelled, and to the number of twelve thousand besieged the place, took it by storm, and tore it all to pieces to search for money in the walls.
Most people in Morocco if they have money, hide it in the walls of their abode, but the Kaid of Amsmiz was wiser, and had sent all his to Mogador. He fought to the last, then cutting all his women’s throats, mounted his favourite horse and almost unattended “maugre all his enemies, through the thickest of them he rode,” leaving his stores well-dressed with arsenic, so that, like Samson in his fall, he killed more of his enemies than in his life. To-day he is said to live in Fez, greatly respected, a quiet old Arab with a fine white beard, whose greatest pleasure is to tell his rosary.
Curious how little the Oriental face is altered by the storms of life. I knew one, Haj Mohammed el —, —a scoundrel of the deepest dye—who in his youth had poisoned many people, had tortured others, assassinated several with his own hand, and yet was a kindly, courteous, venerable gentleman, whose hobby was to buy any eligible young girl he heard of, to stock his harem. One day I ventured to remark that he was getting rather well on in years to think of such commodities. He answered; “Yes, but then I buy them as you Christians buy pictures—to adorn my house; by Allah, my heirs will be the gainers by my mania.” Yet the man’s face was quiet and serene, his eyes bright as a sailor’s, his countenance as little marred by wrinkles as those one sees upon the Bishops’ benches in the House of Lords; and as he stroked his beard, and told his beads, he seemed to me a patriarch after the type of those depicted in the Old Testament. Perhaps it is the lack of railways, with their clatter, smoke, and levelling of all mankind to the most common multiple; but still it is the case—an Eastern scoundrel’s face is finer far than that a Nonconformist Cabinet Minister displays, all spoiled with lines, with puckers round the mouth, a face in which you see all natural passion stultified,and greed and piety—the two most potent factors in his life—writ large and manifest.
An orange grove, backed by a cane-brake, with the canes fluttering like flags, was near to us; cows, goats, and camels roamed about the outskirts of the town, as in Arcadia—that is, of course, the Arcadia of our dreams—or of Theocritus.
Jews went and came, saluting every one, and being answered: “May Allah let you finish out your miserable life”; but yet as pleased as if they had been blessed. Their daughters came, like Rebecca, to the well—all carrying jars—unveiled, and yet secure, for in this land few Moors cast eyes upon the daughter of a Jew.
Upon the ramparts, shadowy white-robed figures, with long guns, go to and fro, guarding the town from hypothetic enemies. Through an arch, between two palm-trees, the Kutabieh rises, distant and slender, and the white haze around its base shows where Marakesh lies. On every hedge are blackberries and travellers’ joy; whilst a large honeysuckle, in full flower, smells better than all Bucklersbury in simple time; a jay’s harsh cry sounds like the howl of a coyote, and Europe seems a million miles away. In the evening light, the footpaths, which cut every hill, shine out as they had all been painted by some clever artist, who had diluted violet with gold.
Nothing reminds one that within half a mile a town, in which three thousand people live, is near, except the footpaths which zigzag in and out, crossing the fields, emerging out of woods, and intersecting one another, as the rails seem to do at Clapham Junction. A fusillade tells that a Sherif from the Sus has just arrived; all Amsmiz sally forth to meet him mounted upon their best, charging right up to the Sherif, and firing close to his horse—wheeling and yelling like Comanches—making a pictureshadowy, fantastic, and unbelievable to one who but three weeks ago had left a land of greys. The Sherif’s people open fire, and when the smoke clears off the Sherif himself, mounted upon a fine white horse, rides slowly forward, holding a green flag. The people fall into a long line behind him, which, by degrees, is swallowed up under the horse-shoe gateway of the town. Mohammed el Hosein, whom I had sent to look out for a horse, appears with a little, undersized, and brachycephalic Shillah, leading a young, black horse, unshod, with feet as long as coops, in good condition and sound in wind and limb, and with an eye the blackest I have seen in mortal horse—a sign of perfect temper; incontinently I determine in my mind to buy him at all cost. We praise our horses—that is, the Shillah praises his—but I, as a Sherif, am far too grand to do so at first hand; so Swani lies like a plumber about mine—which stands and kicks at flies, and looks—like horses do when one is just about to part with them—much more attractive than one ever thought before.
The Shillah leads up his horse, which I pretend hardly to notice; and, luckily for me, he speaks no Arabic. Then he looks at my horse, and, I imagine, grabs him, for Swani springs upon the horse’s back, and runs himventre à terreover the rough stubble, and, stopping with a jerk—the horse’s feet cutting the ground like skates—gets off, and says that, help him, Allah, the horse is fit for Lord Mohammed, and that I only sell him because I am so tender-hearted about the sore upon his back.
This makes the Shillah think there is a “cat shut up inside,”[112]for no one sells a horse for a sore back amongst his tribe. We try his horse—that is, Mohammed el Hosein makes him career about the fieldwithout a bridle; and then I mount him, and display what I consider horsemanship. Nine dollars and the horse? By Allah, seven; but the Shillah, who has not tried my horse, looks at his colt, and says: “I brought him up, fed him with camel’s milk, rode him to war, and he is six years old; nine dollars and the horse.” We shake our heads; and he, mounting his horse, yells like a Pampa Indian, and charging through the cane-brake bare-backed, and with nothing but a string on one side of his horse’s neck, rushes up a steep bank and disappears, riding like a Numidian. I say it was a pity I did not give the nine, but am assured all is not over, and that the man has probably gone to bring back “a bargain-striker” to complete the sale. Throughout Morocco, when animals change hands, the bargaining lasts sometimes for a week; and at the last a man appears, sometimes a passer-by, who is pressed into the undertaking, who, seizing on the bargainers’ right hands, drags them together, and completes the deal.
In about half-an-hour our man comes back, bringing the local “Maalem,” that is Smith, who talks and talks, and as he talks surveys me from the corner of his eye. At last the Shillah yields, takes the seven dollars, counts them with great attention, tapping each one of them upon a stone to see if “it speaks true,” and then mounting my horse essays its paces. As it fell out the horse, which galloped like a roe, with Swani, set off with a plunge which almost sent the Shillah over one side, and turning flew to the mules and stopping by them refused to move a step. The Shillah thought, of course, he had been done, and I had most reluctantly to mount the horse and make him go. We give our word the horse is not a jibber, and swear by Allah if he is, and the Shillah will send him back to Mogador, he shall receive his money and his own horse on our return.
He takes our word at once and grasps my hand, puts his own bridle on my horse, and bending down kisses his own horse underneath the neck, and says, in Shillah, that he hopes I shall never ill-treat it, I promise (and perform) and bid my own horse farewell after my fashion, and the Shillah mounts and rides out of my life towards the town. A little dour and fish-eyed, turbanless and ragged man, legs bowed from early riding, face marked with scars, a long, curved knife stuck through a greasy belt, hands on a horse as if they came from heaven; his farewell to his horse was much more real than is the leavetaking of most men from their wives, and moved me to the point of being about to call him back and break the bargain, had I not reflected that the pang once over, the poor Shillah would never in his life be at the head of so much capital.[114]
In less than half-an-hour the Maalem had shod the horse, shortening its feet with an iron instrument shaped like a trowel, and nailing on the shoes, which almost cover the whole foot, with home-made nails; he stays to guard our animals (and spy upon us), and we prepare for our first al fresco night.