These promises and resolutions one makes, in passing through the world, to return to some place which has struck our fancy, to see some friend who lives ten thousand miles away, are like the apple blossoms blown across a lawn by a May wind; for are not dead flower leaves and broken promises but the illusions of a possibility which might have turned out bitter in the fruit? So, our medicine done, our stock of patience almost exhausted, another day went past, leaving us no other resource to pass the time but to lounge up and down the Maidan, and when evening came welcome the sunset on the spacious amphitheatre of hills.
As the sun sank, the ochre-coloured earth began to glow, each stunted hill bush stood out and became magnified, the rose and purple streaks of light shifted and ran into each other; then faded into violet and pale salmon-colour haze and falling on the snow-capped hills lighted them up, making them reverberate the light upon the rose-red walls and yellow towers, so that the castle seemed to burn, and the muezzin upon his tower appeared to call the faithful to their prayers from a red stalk of flame.
Earlyupon the morning of the 30th we were astir, and heard a report that a rekass had been seen entering the castle-gates the night before. Still, everything went on as usual at Thelata-el-Jacoub, men came and went, tall Arabs and squat Shillah; our animals all stood dejected and half-starved; a little pup having made friends with my Amsmizi horse, who played with him in a perfunctory way. The prisoners on the flat roof sprawled in the sun, passing the Peace of God, on terms of absolute equality with other men, who paused and gravely gave them back their salutation; birds drank and bathed in the little mill-stream under the oleander bushes; butterflies, marbled and black-veined whites, argus, fritillaries, and others quite unknown to me floated along in the still air, or hung suspended over the petals of a flower, and the brown earth of the Maidan gave back the heat like a reflector.
Still no tidings of our long looked for orders to be gone. All our companions in adversity, the Persian, the man with the “sad heart,” the tribesmen in the tent which had been pitched close to our own; even the three Sheikhs from Sus at last had gone, having, after their long delay, settled their business and assured me of their friendship should I visit Sus, their minds made up never again to venture inside the lion’s den. Our tents alone, like mushrooms, dotted the Maidan, and over all the valley the late autumn sun shed a deep calm, making the hills stand out asif cut out of cardboard in the middle distance of a theatre.
The enormous mud-built castle, with its flat roofs and flat-topped flanking towers, took a prehistoric air, and for the first time I imagined I was looking at some old Carthaginian building; for its architecture resembled nothing I had ever seen, being as unlike an Arab Kasbah as to a feudal castle in the north, with somehow a suggestion of a teocalli, such as Bernal Diaz, or Cortes, described in Mexico; or as if related in some curious way to the great buildings in Palenque, temples at Apam, or the more ancient dwellings of the Aztec race upon the Rio Gila. Sheep walked behind their shepherds, who played upon reed pipes as in the times of Hesiod; goats went to pasturage, the kids skipping and playing with the ragged boys, whilst from the distance came the wild sound of the Moorish Ghaita, which, like the bagpipes, is ever most alluring heard from afar; from the hills floated the scent of thyme, germander, gum cistus, and the aromatic undergrowth of this last outpost of the European flora, jutting into the sands of Africa. The river prattled on its stony bed, and on its bank the horses of the Kaid went down to drink, and listlessly I strolled to look at them, thinking, perhaps, that I should have to wait until the autumn rains had made the mountain paths impassable, and that the Kaid would be obliged to send me back against his will through the mysterious passes of the south.
As I mused, drinking in the strange semi-Arcadian, semi-feudalistic scene, the Chamberlain, attended by his guards, crossed the Maidan, came to my tent, and, sitting down, informed me that it was the pleasure of the Kaid that we should start. I asked had the rekass arrived from the Sultan; but the Chamberlain would give no definite reply, until I told him that our men had seen the messenger arrive. Whatwere the exact terms of the Sultan’s message I did not learn, but they could not have been extremely pleasant, either for me or for the Kaid; for in Morocco the Sultan never likes to be put in the position of risking complications with Europeans who might appeal to their home Government, and usually casts all the onus both of action and of failure on his Kaids.
Now was the time to make a last despairing effort to go on to Tarudant; therefore, I tried the Chamberlain in every way I could think of, but without success. Though I had not by this time half the money with me, I offered him a hundred dollars, to which he answered as before, “What is the use to me of a hundred or a thousand dollars without my head?” I shifted ground, and said I could not think of leaving without a personal interview with the Kaid to thank him for his hospitality. But here again the faithful Chamberlain was ready with a message, “that it pained his Excellency not to receive me, but his wound had broken out afresh, and that he sent many salaams and wished me a prosperous journey back to the coast.” So as a last resource I asked the Chamberlain “What if I get on horseback, and ride straight on to Sus?” only to be met with a grave question if I thought I had the best horse in the valley, and if, supposing any tribesman was to fire by accident, I thought my clothes were stout enough to turn a ball.
Seeing there was no chance, I made a virtue of necessity, ordered my tent to be taken down, and all got ready for the road.
The Chamberlain behaved with infinite tact, allowing no one to come near us, either to steal or ask for money, and took his “gratification” with an air of having earned it by laborious work; then shook my hand, and said he hoped some day to meet me, and that I was to think he had only acted as he had, by the orders of his chief. He then shook hands, firstwith Lutaif, then with Mohammed-el-Hosein and Swani, and took his leave, leaving us all alone on the Maidan, in a broiling sun, with nothing to eat, and ten or twelve hours of the hardest mountain roads to pass before it was possible to procure food for our animals or for ourselves. How all the others felt I do not know; but for myself, when I reflected on my journey lost, my twelve days of detention, and how near I had been to reaching Tarudant, being stopped but by the merest chance, I felt inclined to laugh. Knowing that almost all the houses were in ruins on the way, and that the only place where it was possible to buy barley for the mules was at a little castle called Taquaydirt-el-Bur, which belonged to the Kaid, and the Sheikh of which was known as a fanatical and disagreeable man, I sent Lutaif to the castle for the last time to get a letter from the Kaid to his lieutenant on the road. Quite evidently they were determined we should go, for in about half an hour Lutaif returned with the letter and a negress carrying some bread and couscousou, on which we made a hearty breakfast, knowing that we should get nothing more till night.
When one has little to pack, arrangements for a journey are soon despatched, and we had nothing but our tent and a few rugs; no food, no barley for the mules, and the precious stock of medicines, which was to have made my name in Tarudant, was long run out. The men all worked like schoolboys packing to go home, especially Mohammed-el-Hosein, who had never thought to leave the place alive, or at the least to lose his mules, and be well beaten for his pains. His spirits rose enormously, and he assured me he was ready even now to try the road by Agadhir. Swani sang Spanish and English sailors’ songs, not to be quoted until the “woman movement” either makes women accustomed to the tone of much of sailors’ conversation, or else refines our mariners andmakes their talk more fit for ears polite, or hypocritical. Ali was like a man in a dream, and felt his mule all over to see if it had suffered by the long exposure to heat and rain, with barely any food. It winced, and kicked at him to show its love, and to assure him that its spirit was not injured by its fast.
So all being ready, and not a soul about, I mounted, took the black Amsmizi horse by the head and felt his mouth, touched him with the spur, and let him run across the empty Maidan, turned him and made him rear, and plunging down the steep path to the beach, just met the horses of the Kaid for the last time, being led out to drink. The wounded cream colour, now almost quite recovered, stood up and gave a long defiant neigh, and as we rode under the castle walls upon the stony bed of the N’fiss, the figure of the Chamberlain appeared, and waved to us in a friendly fashion, so that my last impression of the place was his grave figure, silent and robed in white, and the fierce stallion neighing on the beach.
About a mile, following the river’s bed, the trail leads through a scrub of oleanders, rises and enters a fantastic path worn in the limestone rock, cut here and there into pyramids and pinnacles by time, by traffic, and by winter rains, and looking something like the “seracs” formed in the ice upon the edge of certain glaciers. We followed it about a quarter of a mile, and turning, saw the castle of the Thelata-el-Jacoub for the last time.
But as I checked my horse, who, now his little spurt of spirit over, felt the twelve days’ lack of food, and hung his head, I gazed upon the monstrous mud-built, yellowish-red pile, marked once again the olive grove upon the edge of the Maidan, just caught the mosque tower with its green metallic tiles, the cornfields, and the wild, narrow valley stretching to the snow-capped hills, the river like a steel wire windingin and out between its steep high banks, and in my heart thanked fortune which, no doubt for some wise (though hidden) purpose of its own, had kept me prisoner for twelve well-filled days in such a place. Lutaif, in spite of all his piety, as he took his last look at the valley of Kintafi, I fancy muttered something which sounded like an imprecation on Mohammed and his faith, but yet confessed that even in the Lebanon there was no valley wilder or more beautiful than that of the N’fiss. Mohammed-el-Hosein felt at his beard as if to assure himself it still grew on his chin, and without stint cursed Kaid and castle, tribe, place, and all the dwellers in it to the fourth and fifth generation of the sons of mothers who never yet said No. Swani was of opinion that of all men he had seen the Shillah were the most like Djins, and beat even the Jaui,[249]who, as all men knew, are sprung from monkeys, in ill-favouredness of face and wickedness of heart.
Our feelings thus relieved, we set ourselves to drive our half-starved beasts over the mountain roads. The miles seemed mortal, and the scenery, though wonderful enough, chiefly remarkable for the unending hills, the frequent elbows made by the N’fiss, now deeper and much fiercer than when we came, owing to the recent rains, which forced us to cross repeatedly and get wet every time; for the snow, which now lay thickly on the higher hills, though the sun was hot, still made the wind as cold as winter, and our clothes like paper on our backs. As we spurred along, calling, when a mule stumbled upon a narrow path above the river, upon Sidi bel Abbas, the saint of wayfarers, we racked our brains to discover how we had been found out. The sun, the winds, the want of food, the rain and dust of the road, had bythis time rendered us almost as dark as Moors. So we were certain that we looked the character, for all the passers-by saluted us with “Peace” and never turned their heads to look at us, taking us evidently for travellers from the Sus. My own idea was that the man we had taken from Amsmiz had passed the word along the road. The others thought, some one thing, some another, and so we talked away, till at the last Mohammed-el-Hosein resolved the matter, saying that Allah had not wished us to succeed. Once more we crossed the rugged hill, where I had seen the miserable donkey fallen on the road surrounded by his wretched owners, or compeers. Again we stopped to rest the animals under the oleander bushes by the stream; but this time all dejected, hungry, and without refreshment, but a pipe of kief, which Ali brought triumphantly out of a dirty bag, and which we smoked by turns, sitting like Indians at a council, waiting for the word.
Just about sundown we came to Taquaydirt-el-Bur, to find it full; a sort of festival in process in the mosque; mules, horses, donkeys, and armed men pervading all the place; a whistling north wind blowing from the snow; nothing to eat, and to be kept at least an hour sitting upon our beasts, whilst the Sheikh read the letter we delivered from the Kaid. At last a filthy negro came and called us in; whilst riding through the dark and tortuous passage to the inner court, my horse fell twice, once on a donkey and again upon a mule: and the confusion, struggling, kicking, cursing, and plunging in the dark, made me despair of getting through without a broken bone. When we emerged the inner court was full; men slept beside the donkeys, upon their pack-saddles; and on the plaster benches running round the wall beside them were their guns, their daggers, and their quarter staffs; underneath their heads their money,valuables, corn for their horses, or anything they chanced to value most. Luckily none of them knew that we were Christians, but thought most likely we were guests the Sheikh considered worthy of his care; for no one looked at us, and we were glad to pack into a room above an oil-press, smelling abominably of oil, filthy, and with an opening in the roof through which we saw the stars. Upon the doors and shutters were some most curious concentric patterns cut deep in the wood. They were not Arab, yet not like any European work, nor yet were made by Jews; but they reminded me, as the Kasbah at Kintafi had done, of the strange temples of Palenque, the patterns on the Aztec Calendar, and the Sacrificial Stone built into a side wall of the great church at Mexico. Miserably we sat squatted before a pan of charcoal trying to dry our clothes, and after some hours’ waiting, a man appeared with a dish of eggs fried in high-smelling Argan oil, which we despatched at once, and tried to sleep; but between the cold and the assaults of every kind of insect, found it impossible, tired with the journey and hungry as we were. All through the night a sort of Tenebræ seemed to be going on in the neighbouring mosque; ghaitas were played, and every now and then a man broke out into a long high chant, the congregation answering him at stated intervals. Long before day I roused our people up, saddled, and picked our way through the courtyard where the travellers were still buried in sleep, then got upon the road just as the stars were paling, and a whistling wind blowing from off the snow, which chilled us to the bones. Mohammed-el-Hosein and Swani were afraid the Kaid might change his mind and send men after us to bring us back; so we pushed on as fast as we could go for about four hours, until the half-starved beasts began to tire, then walked a spell, and finally sat down to rest (this time withouteven a pipe of kief), and let the beasts try to pick up some grass.
Until that moment, so hurried had been our journey, I had not determined where to go; and after consultation, it being manifest we could not reach Morocco city by nightfall with our jaded beasts, and as I was not anxious to camp in the mountains another night without a chance of food, I determined to push on to Tamasluoght, the Sherif of which, Mulai-el-Haj, I knew and to whom I had sent a letter from Kintafi, asking him to agitate for our release. From where we were, the Zowia of Tamasluoght was distant at least eight hours’ march, and if we wanted to arrive with light the time was short enough. So we pushed on; stumbling along the mountain paths, dismounting now and then to lead our animals, all silent and occasionally a little cross. The road branched to the east, and separated from the Amsmiz path close to the place where we had seen a salt mine on our journey towards the Sus. Here for the first time we entered a real cedar forest; the trees not high, rarely exceeding thirty feet in height; but thick and growing closely so as in places to exclude the light. The trail led in and out between the trunks, and at times narrowed to about two feet in breadth, and went sheer down for seven or eight hundred feet. Unmindful of the proverb that “he who passes a bridge on horseback looks death in the face,”[252]we passed without dismounting till Lutaif’s saddle slipping almost precipitated him down the precipice. Dimly, and at an immense depth below, we saw the salt mine, looking like a glacier, and shining white as snow; the mode of working being to dig innumerable pits, from which the water ran into a sort of reservoir, where the salt lay heaped. Miserable donkeys crawled along the mountain paths, all grossly overladen; and men passed strippedhalf-naked, but perspiring even in the chilly air, bent, like Swiss porters carrying tourists’ boxes, under great loads of salt.
At last we began to leave the mountains, and emerged on to a broad and fertile plateau, much like Castille, and growing the same crops of wheat, chick peas and vetches, with the resemblance increased by the mud-built houses, looking so like the hills that now and then we came upon a village almost before we could be sure if the brown heaps were irregularities of the ground, or houses, so exactly did the colours blend. In one of the small hamlets we bought bread and fed our horses, and once again pushed on, till about four o’clock, after winding up an interminable staircase of rock, all of a sudden the plain of Morocco burst upon us; the great city in the distance, and the Kutubieh standing like a lighthouse of Islam, to guide the wanderer home. From thence the descent was rapid; and in another hour we found ourselves in a different climate, and again came to a country where it had not rained for months, but was burnt up and dry, with all the water-courses turned to brown holes, and a dull shimmering in the still air broken but by the grasshoppers’ shrill note. The next three hours were mortal, and about sundown our animals reeled through the olive groves, which for a mile or more surrounded the Zowia of Tamasluoght. We passed some water wheels, and drank at the first of them; passed underneath the curious apparatus like a switchback, supported on brick towers at intervals of a hundred feet, by means of which water is taken to the Sherif’s house; rode through some sandy lanes, with houses here and there; came to the gateway, and were met by Mulai-el-Haj in person, who said he had not thought we should have got out of Kintafi upon such easy terms.
No one could be more absolutely unlike our latelamented host than Mulai-el-Haj, an Arab of the Arabs, descended from the Prophet, but with little of the dignity that rank (in the East) usually confers on its possessor. A man of peace in fact, a semi-sacred character, and a sort of cross between the Pope and a feudal baron of old time; rich, influential, and occupying in the south the position held in the north by the Sherifs of Wazan. When at last our diplomats became aware that the French had secured a footing in Wazan, and by their railway to Ain Sefra a point of descent on Fez and on Morocco city, it occurred to them to secure Mulai-el-Haj, as a set-off to the all-prevailing influence of the French throughout the north. So they induced our Government to extend British protection to the Sherif of Tamasluoght; but the protection has been so grudgingly extended as to be hardly of avail.
Into the ethics of the European occupation of Morocco I do not propose to go; but if at any time that occupation should occur, it is certain that Europe would not see us in Tangier. The French have thoroughly secured the north, and as the Germans will no doubt bid for some towns upon the coast, it might perhaps be advisable to take the south, and so control the Sus, secure Morocco city, and thus keep a way open for the Saharan trade, and opening Agadhir, or some port on the Wad Nun, check French advance from St. Louis, Senegal, and Dakar, and their possessions in the south. I should prefer to see Morocco as it is, bad government and all, thinking but little as I do of the apotheosis of the bowler hat, and holding as an article of faith that national government is best for every land, from Ireland to the “vexed Bermoothes,” and from thence to Timbuctoo.
Let us rob on in Europe as we have always done since first the Vikings sailed their long ships to plunder and to steal. England has never laggedbehind in all adventures of this kind, so if there is a general scramble for Morocco, let us have our share. Statesmen can surely find reasons to justify us, and if they fail, we can sail in under the Jolly Roger, after the fashion of our ancestors upon the Spanish main. When we arrived at Tamasluoght, nothing was farther from my mind than politics, the advance of empires, ethics of conquest, Hinterlands, and things of that sort, on which the opinion of the first fool in the street is just as valuable as that of the politician fool, who stumbles out his halting speech to his bemused electors, who elect him for his likeness to themselves in density of head.
Mulai-el-Haj ushered us into a sort of kiosque, built in the style of the Alhambra, with a small court in front, in which grew cypresses and oranges, and would hear no word of anything before he had seated us on a comfortable divan in the recess of a window in his guest-chamber, which opened on a little garden where a fountain played, the water splashing on a marble basin, and the scent of flowers rising up to the room. After the Arab fashion he never left us for a moment,[255]and whilst a repast was being got ready, set tea before us, and then coffee, and, to pass by the interval, fresh bread and butter in a cracked though lordly dish. All was perfectly appointed in Arab style, the china French, the basin in which we washed our hands of brass most beautifully worked, and a black (uncomely) slave girl with heavy silver anklets handed round the cups. In her confusion at the sight of Christians, instead of handing us a napkin she handed something which looked like the trimming of her drawers,and being rebuked in Shillah, retired in tears, and another equally ill-favoured damsel took her place. Her name I think was Johar, and the Sherif explained with gravity that negresses were as immodest as the hens, and that the slave had better have kept the trimming of her drawers to veil her face, though, as he said, what with the tattoo marks and negro features it contained little to tempt the eyes of a believing man. To this I gave a qualified assent, and through the medium of Lutaif guided the conversation on to more general grounds, on which a man, used from his youth, as Europeans are, to think all women angels in disguise, might comfortably join.
The Sherif having gone to the mosque for a brief interval, I walked into the courtyard to see my horse, and found him standing dejectedly and too worn out to eat; the mules exhausted, one of them lying down, with the men sitting beside them, too tired even to light a fire. Lutaif, who was not much accustomed to such trots, and who moreover had ridden a tired mule for most part of the day, had nearly fallen asleep during the tea and coffee and the long talk with the Sherif, now was a little rested, and strolled with me about the place.
The house was built in the usual Moorish style; with crenelated walls, flanking towers, and dome-shaped roofs. It had innumerable courts, a mosque, a women’s wing, a granary, store-houses, baths, and everything in the first style of modern Arab taste. All round the houses stood cypresses, many of great age and height; over the mosque two or three palm-trees waved, and oranges and olives extended for some acres upon every side. There was a garden in the Eastern taste, where water trickled in a thousand little rills; canes fluttered, rustling like feathers in the air; jasmine and honeysuckle climbed up the azofaifa trees, sweet limes and lemons with pomegranates were dotted here and there; someperiwinkles, but larger and paler than those grown in Europe, grew in the grass; here and there stood geranium bushes, straggling and run to seed. Over it all brooded the air of decadence, mixed with content, which makes an Eastern garden that of all others where a slothful and religious man should find heart-ease, and reading in some book of things beyond the power of intellect, leave them without solution, and sit still giving thanks for gardens as a true Christian should.
The inside of the house was decorated in a sort of pseudo-Persian style, with double doors all gilt, each with a little horseshoe opening in the middle of it through which to pass, and on each side a formal tree like those upon the binding of a Persian manuscript. In fact, a modern replica of the Alhambra done without art, the gildings and the columns common, heavy and overcharged, and nothing really good except the iron gratings of the windows, and the tiles which, made to-day in Fez, seem to have but little deteriorated in glaze and colour from those left by the Moors in Spain.
The prayers over, the Sherif came back to keep us company, and sat till midnight talking of all sorts of things.
He appeared to think that we had great luck in not having been sent as prisoners to the Sultan’s camp, for if we had been sent, we might have remained for weeks journeying about with the army before we were released. I was not sure if on the whole I was glad to have missed the experience, but as it would have been impossible to explain my reasons, I held my peace. Mulai-el-Haj, being an English protected subject, felt or assumed to feel great interest in English things. He asked most ceremoniously after our Grand Vizir (Lord Salisbury), was curious about the Queen, talked of the rising ofthe Afridis, and hoped that God would give the victory to our armies, a consummation which in his heart of hearts he could not really have wished, for no Mohammedan ever desires that Kaffirs shall triumph over “those of the faith.” His questions answered with great detail, he launched into a disquisition on the present state of things in Morocco under the Vizir-ship of Ba Ahmed, “for the young Sultan rules but by his hand.”
What he communicated may or may not have been his real opinion, for Arabs are apt to say that which they think will please their hearers; but situated as he was—that is, being a rich, powerful (and tolerably selfish) man—it may be that his words really conveyed his thoughts. “I have known tyrannies by Allah, and the late Sultan, Mulai-el-Hassan (may God have pardoned him), was not a lamb. His father was something sterner, and their vizirs were apt, as vizirs always are, to fill their purses at the expense of powerful men. But since I first became a man, never a state of things so bad as now. Ba Ahmed passes all measure, grinds the faces of the poor, maintains the Sultan in a state of tutelage, taking his wives if so it pleases him, and sending them to his own house; he also sends the public money into France and puts it in their cursed banks, so that if the time for vengeance comes, he can escape and live upon it.” Then looking round the room and moving up his cushions close to mine and laying one hand on my arm, he asked, “Do you catch all I say?” for poor Lutaif had almost dropped asleep. I understood him as he spoke slow and plainly, and he began. “Has England quite forgotten us, or does she sleep? Time was when she was not wont to wait long when a country lay open as does Morocco to her power.” I thought he understood our policy and what has made us so beloved by everyone, so nodded, and he went on. “I can insure the southernchiefs of all the tribes. I, Mulai-el-Haj, who speak, but who through the intrigues of Ba Ahmed dare not leave his house; twice have they fired at me walking in my own garden, once when on my horse almost a mile outside, and even now I know that men are waiting for me did I go out. But still I can insure the southern chiefs from here to Tazerouelt, westward to Tuats, to Tafilet, and through the Atlas; the dwellers in the plain around the city of Morocco all either send emissaries or visit me by night. I tell you, even the wildest of those who think a Christian is not a human being are so hard pressed, that if the English came they would meet them on the road and pour out milk.[259]God instituted government, as he made moon and sun, set one by day to shine, the other to guide wanderers by night, and as he set the stars in the blue heavens, so he set Kaids and Governors, Sheikhs, Mokadems, Cadis, and all the hierarchy of rulers, each in his place to rule mankind. The tail can never be so honourable as is the head, and whilst men still exist they must be ruled, ruled justly; but this Ba Ahmed knows no justice in his heart.” Passion, O’ me, I thought, he is no socialist, nor for that matter is the poorest Arab, all thinking that authority came straight from God. Then he continued, “For two years I have never dared to go to Morocco city, though but three hours away. My houses there are ruined. Ba Ahmed has taken one of them, and the other stands open a prey to wind and rain, with all the woodwork torn away and burnt. Your ‘Bashador’ two years ago advised me to make friends if possible with the Vizir. Therefore I bought a female slave, not to go empty-handed for I knew well that those in office always expect a present from all those they see. Three hundreddollars did I pay for the girl; not that she was a houri whom the sheep would lift their heads to look at if she walked across a field, but passable, and fitting to present to a man who like Ba Ahmed filled the office of Vizir.
“And so I went to see my enemy. Why he should be my enemy I do not know, except that I am rich and am known to favour England, which he detests; but as it is, may Allah put his mercy some day into the hearts of flint. The girl I placed upon a mule, and taking with me twenty or thirty well-armed men, rode to Morocco city. Arrived before his door, I had to wait two hours, I a Sherif, to wait two hours to please the mulatto dog; and then the slave who led me to him brought me through many passages and left me standing outside a half-opened door, whilst he went in. Long did I stand there, and being angry at the indignities that I was passing through, forbore to listen till at last I heard Ba Ahmed say to his slave, ‘Where is the man?’ The negro answered, ‘He is come,’ and then Ba Ahmed angrily replied, ‘Did you not take him where I told you?’ (i.e.to be killed), and the slave excused himself, saying: ‘I thought you wanted him in here.’ After a moment I heard Ba Ahmed say: ‘I told you plainly to take him to be killed, but God has spared him, let him come in.’ Then the slave threw the door open, and I advanced, was kindly welcomed, sat and drank tea, thinking each cup was poisoned, but made no sign, knowing that Allah, who had spared my life a moment previously, could turn the poison into sugar, if he willed it so.
“We sat and talked, and then I gave the slave girl to him, and she was led away into his house. I took my leave, and he with courteous words urged on me return and visit him; but who that once escapes from the lion’s den places his head again beneath his paw?God has indeed been gracious to me, praise his name, The One.” As he stopped speaking I thought, indeed, who that would pity a snake-charmer who is bitten by a snake, or any one who cometh near wild beasts? I did not say so, but confined myself to praises of his prudence and of the special providence which had saved his life.
Then I enquired if he had got my letter from Kintafi, saying jocularly that I had looked for him to come to my assistance waving a Union Jack. To my surprise he denied all knowledge of the letter, and said he had only heard of my captivity by accident. On going to Morocco city, the day after, I found a special messenger had been sent off to him bearing the letter; but after all blessed are they who expect little, they shall be satisfied.
At midnight, and when Lutaif had long subsided into slumber on the divan, leaving me to puzzle out the worthy gentleman’s discourse as best I could, he took his leave after urging me warmly to bear his compliments to our Grand Vizir. I pitilessly woke up Lutaif and had a consultation with him, what we should do, it being quite impossible for the animals to return to Mogador without some rest, and equally impossible to remain at Tamasluoght, where the Sherif would let us pay for nothing, either for ourselves or for our beasts. Morocco city was but three hours off, and as I expected letters there, we arranged to stop two or three days and feed our animals, and then push on across the plains for Mogador. Next morning saw us in the saddle by ten o’clock; and after a courteous exchange of compliments with the Sherif, and renewed entreaties on his part to put his view of the state of affairs in Morocco before the Grand Vizir on my return, we took our leave.
Thus for the second time I passed a night at Tamasluoght, having once, four years before, been therewith Mr. Harris[262]on the occasion when the Sherif was agitating for British protection; and as I saw him standing before his door and bidding us good-bye, a courteous, prosperous, saintly Moorish gentleman, it came back to my mind that I had said to Mr. Harris that his protection, as far as English interests were concerned, was thrown away.
If we protect at all, except from pure philanthropy, we should protect lean, sunburnt sheikhs, who pass their lives on horseback, and at whose call spears and long guns rise from the desert like frozen reeds stick through the ice in ponds in winter time; and if that sort is not available, why those of the same kidney as the man in whose house I slept next night, Abu Beckr el Ghanjaui, prince of all Moorish intriguers and diplomatists; one who will stick to any cause through thick and thin if it is worth his while, and who, I fancy, if he chose to speak all that he knows of British policy in Morocco, could make some diplomatic folk get up and howl, or send them snorting like an Indian pony about the Foreign Office.
Oncethrough the olive groves of Tamasluoght, the city of Yusuf-ibn-Tachfin[263]lay glistening on the plain, almost hull down on the horizon. Above the forests of tall date palms which fringe the town, the tall mosque towers rose, the Kutubieh and the minaret of Sidi Bel Abbas high above the rest. From the green gardens of the Aguedal the enormous stone-built pile of the Sultan’s palace, all ornamented with fine marbles brought from Italy and Spain, towered like a desert-built Gibraltar over the level plain. Across the sea-like surface of the steppe long trains of camels, mules, and men on foot crawled, looking like streams of ants converging on a giant ant-hill, whilst in the distance the huge wall-like Atlas towering up, walled the flat country in, as the volcanoes seem to cut off Mexico from the world outside. The situation of Morocco city much resembles that of Mexico, which has a pseudo-Oriental look, the flat-roofed houses and the palm trees completing the effect.
A hot three hours, kicking our tired beasts along, brought us outside the city walls, and passing underneath the gate, which zig-zags like an old Scottishbridge, we emerged into the sandy lanes running between orange gardens, which form a kind of suburb of the town, and where the Soudanese, the men from Draa and the Wad Nun, do mostly congregate. No one would ever think, from the aspect of the lanes, unpaved and broken into holes by winter rains, that he was actually inside a city which is supposed to cover almost as much ground as Paris. It took us almost three-quarters of an hour to ride from the outside walls to the centre of the town. We passed through narrow lanes where camels jammed us almost to the wall; along the foot-paths beggars sat and showed their sores; dogs, yellow, ulcerous and wild as jackals, skulked between our horses’ legs. At last we came out on an open space under the tower of the Kutubieh, in which square a sort of market was in progress, and a ring of interested spectators sat, crouched, and stood, intent upon a story-teller’s tale. I sat a moment listening on my horse, and heard enough to learn the story was after the style of the Arabian Nights, but quite unbowdlerised and suitable for Oriental taste.
A certain prince admired a beauteous dame, but an old Sultan (always the wicked baronet of Eastern tales) desired her for his harem, and engaged a certain witch, of whom there were great store throughout his territory, to cast a spell upon the prince, so that the lady should fall into a dislike of him. He, on his part, resorted to a wizard who stirred the ladies of the Sultan’s harem up to play strange pranks and turn the palace upside down, let young men in o’nights, stay out themselves too late, and generally comport themselves in a discreditable way. A faithful slave at last made all things right, and after a most realistic love scene the prince and princess were married and lived happy ever after; or, as the story-teller, a sad moralising wag, remarked, until the prince should takeanother wife. Humanity, when crushed together in the heat, either in London ball-rooms or in waste places in Morocco city, sends up a perfume which makes one regret that the cynical contriver of the world endowed us with a nose. Therefore I waited but a little and rode on, turning occasionally to take a look at the great mosque and the tall dusty tower. The outside of the mosque, the name of which in Arabic means Mosque of the Books, from the word Kitab, a book, is not imposing. What it is inside I believe no Christian knows. Had I that moment, dressed as I was, sunburned and dirty, got off and entered it, I might have seen, but the thought did not cross my mind, and afterwards, when known for a European, it might have cost my life. The tower springs straight from the sandy square as the Giralda rises from the level of the street in Seville. One man built both, so runs tradition, and certainly the Kutubieh tower to-day reminds one greatly of the description of the Giralda when San Fernando drove out the Moorish king of Seville, and planted the banner with the Castles of Castille above the town. The same gilt globes, of which the Spanish speak, are on the Moorish tower, and the same little cupola which the Christians took away in Seville, replacing it by a renaissance “fleche,” upon which stands the towering figure cast by Bartolomé Morel. The tower, almost three hundred feet in height, is built of dark-red stone, with the alternating raised and sunk patterns (called in Spanish Ajaracas) cut deeply or standing boldly out from the solid masonry. At one time tile work filled most of the patterns, or was embroidered round the edges of the windows, but neglect and time have made most of it drop away. Still, just below the parapet runs a broad band, which from the square appears to be full four feet broad, of the most wonderful black and greenhidescent tiles I ever saw. When Fabir, who, tradition says, built it for the Sultan El Mansur, and it stood glorious, adorned with tiles like those which still remain, the gilding fresh upon the great brass balls, even the mosque at Cordoba itself could not have been more glorious, and El Mansur could not have easily foreseen that on his lonely tomb under the palm trees, beside the river at Rabat, goats would browse and shepherds play their pipes. Allah, Jehovah, all the Gods are alike unmindful of their worshippers, who made and gave them fame; what more may the contrivers of the Crystal Palace and the gasometers at Battersea expect, when they have had their day? Medina, Mellah, Kaiserieh, Sidi Bel Abbas, the tomb of Mulai Abdul Azis, all have been described so many times and by such serious and painstaking writers, who have apparently measured, re-measured, and calculated the cubic capacity of every building in Morocco city, that it would have been a work of supererogation on my part to have laid a measuring tape once more on any of them.
Morocco city struck me, and has always done so, for I have been there twice, as the best example of a purely African city I have seen. Fez has the mixture of Spanish blood in its inhabitants which the expulsed from Malaga, Granada, and from all the Andalos, brought and disseminated. In the high houses, which make the streets like sewers to walk in, you hear men play the lute, and women sing the Malagueña, Caña and the Rondeña as in mountain towns in Spain. Quite half the population have fair hair, some pale blue eyes, and their fanaticism is born of ancient persecution by the fanatic Christians of Spain. In every house, in every mosque, in almost every saint’s tomb is fine tile work, stone and wood carving, the eaves especially being often as richly decorated as they had been Venetian and not African. The streets arethronged, men move quickly through them and the whole place is redolent of aristocracy, of a great religious class, in fact has all the air of what in Europe we call a capital.
Morocco city is purely African, negroes abound; the streets are never full, even in the kaiserieh[267]you can make your way about. With the exception of the Kutubieh Tower, and some fine fountains, notably that with the inscription “Drink and admire” (Shrab-u-Schuf) inscribed upon it, and the fine gate of the Kasbah of the best period of Moorish work, there is no architecture. Sand, sand, and more sand in almost every street, in the vast open spaces, in the long winding narrow lanes, outside the walls up to the city gates; sand in your hair, your clothes, the coats of animals. Streets, streets, and still more streets of houses in decay. Yellow adobe walls, dazzling white roofs and dense metallic semi-tropical vegetation shrouding the heaps of yellowish decaying masonry. No noise, the footfalls of the mules and camels falling into the sand as rain falls into the sea, with a soft swishing sound.
The people all are African, men from the Draa, the Sus, the Sahara, Wad Nun and the mysterious sandy steppes below Cape Bojador. Arabs are quite in the minority, and the fine types and full grey beards of aged Sheikhs one sees so frequently in Fez exchanged for the spare Saharowi type, or the shaved lip and cheeks and pointed chin tufts of the Berber race. Tom-tom and gimbry are their chief instruments, together with the Moorish flute, ear-piercing and encouraging to horses, who when they hear its shriek, step proudly, arching their necks and moving sideways down the streets as if they liked the sound. Their songs are African, the interval so strange, andthe rhythm so unlike that of all European music, as at first hearing to be almost unintelligible; but which at last grow on one until one likes them and endeavours to repeat their tunes. Hardly an aristocratic family lives in the place, and few Sherifs, the richer of the population being traders with the Sahara.
A city of vast distances, immense perspectives, great desolate squares, of gardens miles in length, a place in which you want a mule to ride about, for to attempt to labour through the sand on foot would be a purgatory. And yet a place which grows upon you, the sound of water ever in your ears, the narrow streets arched over all with grape vines; mouth of the Sahara, city of Yusuf-ibn-Tachfin, town circled in with mountains, plain girt, sun beaten, wind swept, ruinous, wearisome, and mournful in the sad sunlight which enshrouds its mouldering walls.
Fez and Rabat, Sefrou, Salee and Mogador with Tetuan, Larache, Dar-el-Baida and the rest may have more trade, more art, more beauty, population, importance, industry, rank, faith, architecture, or what you will; but none of them enter into your soul as does this heap of ruins, this sandheap, desert town, metropolis of the fantastic world which stretches from its walls across the mountains through the oases of the Sahara; and which for aught I know may some day have its railway station, public houses, Salvation Army barracks, and its people have their eyes opened, as were those of Adam and of Eve, and veil their nakedness in mackintoshes. Through streets and open spaces, past mosque doors, with glimpses of the worshippers at prayers seated upon the floor, or lounging in the inner courts, through streets arched in with vines, the trellis work so low that upon horseback one had to bend one’s head in passing, and at the side door of the missionary’s house (Dar-Ebikouros) I got off, and, sending up a boy, was metby Mr. Nairn, who for a moment did not recognise me dressed in the Moorish clothes. There, as upon my first visit to Morocco city, I received a hospitable and courteous welcome. Long we sat talking of our captivity. I learned about the hurried visit of the Oudad with letters, his departure without a word, and found that no one had expected us so soon. Mr. Nairn, who spoke both Arabic and Shillah well, had passed on one occasion close to Kintafi; but, not having been near the castle, was not recognised, but like myself had been unable to push on to Tarudant. This in a measure consoled me for my failure, as Mr. Nairn had lived long in the country, spoke the language well, and with his dark complexion and black hair, dressed in the Moorish clothes, must have looked exactly like a Berber mountaineer. After a welcome and most necessary bath I left his hospitable house and rode to Sid Abu Beckr’s, almost the only man in Morocco city from whom it is possible for a European to get a house. And, as I rode, I mused upon the mystery of faith, and marvelled to see the honest single-hearted missionary still with the cross upon his shoulders, ploughing the stony vineyard of the Moorish heart, quite as contentedly and just as hopefully as he had done four years ago. Yet, not a ray of hope, without a convert or a chance of making one, and still contented, hoping for the time when he should see the fruit of his hard work. Crowds thronged his courtyard in the morning to get medicines, and I fancy as he dispensed his drugs, in the goodness of his heart he tried to do all that was in his power to lead his patients to what he thought the truth. Women in numbers came, not for the medicines, so much as for the bottles, which they valued highly to keep oil for cooking in, throwing the medicine carefully away; but cherishing the flask and bearing it about them always, slung in a little case. Bottlesmay yet save souls when preaching fails, for women who receive them may so work upon their husbands’ hearts, that by degrees, from the errors of Mohammed and the mere two ounce phial, they rise to the imperial pint and Christianity; and so societies at home should send more bottles out, artfully coloured and with the necks fashioned to hold a string, so that if bibles prove of no effect, bottles may yet prevail.
Not that I mean to undervalue missionaries, they have their uses, but in a different way from that in which perchance they think themselves. What they can do is to set forth, in countries like Morocco, that they are not mere merchants trying to deceive all those with whom they deal. So in Morocco city Mr. Nairn and his wife, and the young men and women of his household, have the respect of all the Moors for the pureness of their life, and their untiring kindness to the poor. The educated Moors see that they are like their own religious sects—that is, their minds are fixed, not upon gain, but prayer, and in the East madness and holiness are held akin, and both, as being sent from heaven, are respected.
In a few hundred yards I left all holiness behind, and getting off at Abu Beckr’s door, found that astute and clever politician seated as usual at the receipt of custom, counting some money which he had just received, a pistol by his side and a large iron box wide open by him in which to store the gold.
Sid Abu Beckr el Ghanjaui is known from the Atlas to the Riff, and from the Sahara to Mogador, feared and disliked, and yet respected, for the Moor above all other things respects success. Not that, by any means, he thinks the less of those who fail. Success and failure are both sent by God, they were ordained (Mektub), and the mere man is but the instrument of Allah’s will. For the last thirty years Sid Abu Beckr has been the British agent in Morocco. During thattime he has made many enemies, as any man of ability placed in his position could not fail to do. Of obscure origin and deeply tinged with negro blood, he is, perhaps, to-day the richest and the ablest man in the whole country. Few men in any land have been the victims of more calumnies, but, on the other hand, few men have had more friends. To some, a slave dealer, a traitor, spy, and perjured sycophant; to others, a true friend of England, a man who has suffered much for his devotion to her cause. To me, a clever, scheming politician, who has known the right way in which to play upon the weaknesses of a long series of Ambassadors. A friend to England without doubt, as thrasher is to sword-fish when they attack a whale. A true “faux maigre”; a thin yet flabby man, scant bearded like a eunuch, reedy voiced, and in complexion atrabilious; his shoulders bent, eyes with spots on the yellowish whites, and pupils like a cat’s; slight nervous hands, persuasive manners, and, in fact, one who impresses you at first sight as a keen intellect confined in a mean envelope; but yet not despicable.
Not what is called an educated Moor, still less of the Moorish upper classes by his birth, he yet to-day has as much power in Morocco as any man outside the circle of the court. He says he speaks no English, though I think he understands it, but he takes care to conceal such knowledge of it as he may have, so that in speaking to him, those who speak no Arabic, speaking through an interpreter, may give him ample time for the consideration of every word he says. Never for a moment to be caught off his guard or disconcerted, for the story goes that once, during an ambassadorial visit, a slave dealer came with some merchandise, and that, in answer to the query of the Ambassador if those were slaves, Beckr replied they were, but, as he was an English subject, when they entered through his doors they became free at once.
For some reason, not perfectly explained, the Nonconformist conscience, some years ago, was greatly exercised about the man. All that was infamous was put down to his charge. He was a slave-dealer, a brothel keeper, I think a murderer, and, of course, an adulterer, that being the crime the “Conscience Bearers” detested most, being shut out from all participation by the exigencies of their life. All went on merrily as things are apt to go in England when the accused is a good long way off: questions were asked in Parliament as to why England countenanced such a man as Abu Beckr in a position of high confidence. Ministers answered what was put into their heads, having no inkling of who Abu Beckr was, or what had raised the storm. As there was after all no money in the matter, the questioners gradually tailed off. Then Abu Beckr brought an action in the court in Gibraltar, and explained how it was he had been charged with the commission of so many crimes. It turned out that being a Moor he certainly had slaves, and even bought and sold them as we do horses; but as such was the everyday custom of the land, and he, when he took British protection, had not become a Wesleyan Methodist, where was the harm in it? As to the second charge, he had, of course, four wives, and no doubt many women in his house, but, as he pertinently said, that his religion allowed him, and as far as he knew yet, he had not changed his faith. So he triumphantly floored his antagonists, got damages, received eventually a silver tea service from the British Government, and retired to his home to laugh at every one concerned.
Abu Beckr, though he knew I had arrived in town, most likely took me for a Moor from Fez, between whom and the people of Morocco city little love is lost, for somewhat roughly he asked me what I wanted, and did not offer me a seat. I listened tohim for a moment, and watched his cunning diplomatic smile, as he looked at me from the corner of his eyes to find out who I was. Then I said in English, “Good morning, Sidi Beckr”; and he laughed and said he had known me all the time, but wanted to see what kind of Arabic I spoke. As he had only seen me once before some years ago, and dressed in European clothes, I only smiled, and said my Arabic was worse than ever, and that I wanted him to lend me some house in which to rest my servants and myself.
A man was brought to accompany us to an empty house hard by; he bore a monstrous key, and after leading us through several narrow streets, stopped at a brand new house, and throwing the door wide open said it was fit for any king, and that he generally received five dollars upon Abu Beckr’s account for opening the door. I told him instantly that I should mention to his master what he said, then took the key out of his hand, gave him a dollar, and asked Lutaif to tell him to what place the Koran condemns all those who palter with the truth. The usual scrubbing and swilling out took place, which always has to be undertaken before it is possible to occupy an empty Moorish house. Once swilled and dried, we installed our scanty property, sent out for food, put up our horses in a fondak not far off, and fell asleep upon the floor. Upon awakening we found the dinner beside us, and a negro squatting, and patiently watching till we should awake.
During the interval, Swani and Mohammed-el-Hosein had both gone to the bath, and then I fancy, after the fashion of all sailors and muleteers after a voyage or trip, gone on the spree, for in the morning they appeared like Mr. Henley’s “rakehell cat,” looking a little draggled, and the worse for wear, and swearing that they had not touched a drop of drink. The patient Ali never stirred away, being, as he said,rather afraid to venture out alone amongst the people in the crowded streets. After a journey in Morocco the men always ask for new shoes, so to show my disgust at the immoral conduct of the others, I took Ali out and made him happy with a pair of evil-smelling yellow leather shoes, adding a pair of gorgeously embroidered orange-coloured slippers for his House.
A dirty little negro boy came to inform us that Sidi Abu Beckr expected us to dine that afternoon at two o’clock, the fashionable hour in the Sherifian capital.
During the interval I walked about the streets, pleased that the Moorish clothes relieved me from the attentions to which I had been subjected on my former visit to the place. Through the interminable streets I strolled, past ruined fountains and the doors of mosques half opened, from whose interiors came a sound of prayer, as from the beehive comes the murmured prayer of bees. Long trains of camels pressed me into corners to escape their snakelike heads, and suddenly, and without consciousness of how I got there, I found myself in a remembered spot. A little alley paved with cobble-stones and bordered on each side with open shops, in which sat squatted white figures working hand looms which filled the alley with their clack. At the end an archway with a wooden gate hanging ajar. I entered it with a strange feeling of possession, and found everything familiar; the tank, with edges of red stucco work, the Azofaifa[274]trees, the bordering hedge of myrtle, the white datura, the curiously cut semi-Italian flower beds, in which grew marjoram and thyme, the open baldachino at the end, under whose leaky roof a friend and I had spread our rugs and spent ten happy days four years ago, smoking, lounging about, and talkingendlessly of nothing, as only friends can talk, was all unchanged. What are four years of inattention beside the perennial decay of all things Eastern; the winter rain and summer sun had scarcely put an extra stain or two upon the plaster work, the door was made to last for ages, and the trees had but become a little more luxuriant; so, sitting down, I smoked and fell a-musing on the time when in Morocco all would be changed, and places like the Riad[275a]el Hamri, where I then sat, exist no more. Railway engines (praise him who giveth wisdom to mankind) would puff and snort, men hurry to and fro, tramways and bicycles make life full and more glorious; women unveiled would sell themselves after the Christian way for drink and gold; men lie drunk on holidays to show their freedom from debasing superstition; all would be changed; the scent of camels’ dung give place to that of coal dust; and perhaps Allah, after regarding with complacency the work of man, would rest contented as he did in Eden when his first masterpieces forced his hand.
Sid Abu Beckr met us in the courtyard of his house, dressed in a light green robe, spotless white haik,[275b]new yellow slippers, with a large rosary in his hand, although the oldest citizen of Marakesh had never seen him pray. Leading me courteously by the hand into an upper chamber looking upon a courtyard, and decorated in the purest modern Alhambraesque, he seated me, Lutaif, and then himself, on cushions, and we ate solidly for a full hour, until the welcome sight of tea, served in small gold cups, announced our sufferings were at an end.
Nothing would get out of his head at first that I was not an agent of the Globe Venture Syndicate, orhad a mission from the British Government to try and establish some sort of undertaking with the chiefs of Sus. His apprehensions set at rest, or at the least so he pretended, he, too, began to give his views upon the state of current politics. All that the Sherif of Tamasluoght had said he quite corroborated, but with the difference that what he said was the opinion of a quick-witted, clever man, and therefore, to my mind, to some extent brought less conviction than the mere wanderings of the artless “saint.”
Most Arabs of the richer class are quite incapable of seeing anything but from a personal standpoint, and thus it is that, bit by bit, their national power has fallen into decay. In Spain, Damascus, Tunis, and the Morocco of to-day chiefs have arisen, and their sole idea has been to push their individual fortunes. Except the Emir Abd-el-Kader, none have had even a glimpse of trying to restore the Arab power.
So Abu Beckr regaled us with stories of Ba Ahmed’s villainy, his own position and personal insecurity, and assured me that the end was near, and that if England still stood hesitating, France would step in, and lastly, getting for a moment out of his egotism, said, “What avails it that I am so rich when my favourite son died of smallpox only three weeks ago, and I have no one to whom to leave my wealth?” Then he got up and said he had never showed his wealth to anyone, but as he found me so sympathetic to his views (I not having said a word), he would show me all his treasures and his house. Accordingly, we followed him into an interior court, on one side of which a door with about twenty padlocks stood.
Sidi Abu Beckr having assured himself that no one but ourselves was looking on, began to clash and bang amongst the locks and bars, piling the padlocks on the ground, unloosening chains, and making as much noise as a battle of armour-plated knights musthave produced in the never-to-be-forgotten days of chivalry, when, in their mail, the scrofulous champions tapped on one another’s shields. At last the door swung open and disclosed a room packed full of boxes, silver dessert services, china of all sorts, lamps, clocks, and every kind of miscellaneous wealth collected in the long course of an honourable career by strict attention to all economic laws. Boxes were there of iron painted in colours, made in Holland and in Spain, standing beside hide cases, teak chests, and old portmanteaux, Saratoga trunks and safes, cash boxes, sea chests, and packing cases, and all apparently stuffed to the very lids. With pardonable pride, and with a flush stealing upon his parchment cheek, he did obeisance to his gods. “This is all silver Spanish dollars, this Sultan Hassan’s coins, this packing case is jewellery. I had it all in pledge. This, silver in the bar, and these hide bags are gold dust, but the king of all,” and here he touched an antiquated safe, “is el d’hab (gold), chiefly in sovereigns. Yes, I know the waste of interest, but do not think you see half of all my wealth; the bulk of it is safely placed in England—consols, I think they call it—safe, but small returns, and smaller since the accursed Goschen lowered the rate. This that you see I keep beside me, partly from caprice, for el d’hab has always been my passion, passing the love of women, horses, or of anything that God has made to ease the life of man.” As he spoke he patted the safe with his slippered feet, and looked as if he knew a special providence watched over him; but knowing did not truckle to the power, but rather took it as a tribute to himself and his ability, as being well assured that providence is always with the strong. As I looked at him, proud of his wealth, his cunning and his good fortune, it seemed as if our nation, with its power, its riches, and its insensibility, was fitlyrepresented by the worthy man, who, from a camel driver’s state, by the sheer force of industry and thrift, had made his fortune.
Blessed are those who rise, to them the world is pleasant and well ordered, all things are right, and virtue is rewarded (in themselves); thrice blessed are the pachydermatous of heart, the deaf of soul, the invertebrate, insensible, the unimaginative; nothing can injure, nothing wound them; nature’s injustice, man’s ineptitude, fortune’s black joking, leaves them as untouched as a blind cart-horse, who, in struggling up a hill, sets his sharp, calkered foot upon a mouse. But as mankind, in strangeness and variety of mind, is quite incomprehensible, Sidi Abu Beckr had but hardly locked the door upon his hoards than he set to bewail his sonless state. “Allah has given me children (so he said), sons, grown to men’s estate, but all unprofitable, idle and profligate, and of those who spend their time in folly, all but one, a boy to whom I hoped to leave my wealth. All that you see was to be his, the silver, gold, this house, my lands, investments in your country, all I have, and as I thought that Abu Beckr had not lived in vain, the pestilence fell on my house and left me poorer than when I was a camel driver; but it was written; God the most merciful, the compassionate, the inscrutable, he alone giveth life, and sends his death to men. Come let me show you where my blessing died.”
Lutaif, who, since the word smallpox had first been mentioned, had held his handkerchief up to his nose, now for the first time in the journey almost broke into revolt. Pulling my “selham,” he whispered, “Let us go, the infectious microbes stand on no ceremony,” and, in fact, wished to retreat at once. Not from superior bravery, but because I knew if there was mischief it was already done, I laughed at all his fears, told him to trust providence, as a good manshould do, and that for microbes, probably by this time a new school of scientific men said they were non-existent, and put down all diseases to some other cause. Seeing he got no sympathy from me and perhaps after prayer (prayers, idle prayers) he followed, and Abu Beckr conducted us to a room and opened wide the door. Within, piled up upon the floor were heaps of rugs, and evidently no window had been open for a month. “Here (he said) died my son, and nothing has been touched since he was buried; upon this very rug he breathed his last.” And as he spoke, he lifted up a carpet from the Sahara, woven in blue and red, and moved it to and fro so that the microbes, if there were any, must have had fair play to do their work. Lutaif turned pale, and once more pleaded to be off; but Abu Beckr was inexorable and putting down the rug, led us again through a long passage and opening yet another door, said, “Here the mother died, and nothing has been altered since her death.” At last Lutaif grew desperate and seeing there was no escape began to grow at ease and followed us through countless passages, peeping into rooms in each of which some member of the family had died.
On our return to the alcove, where tea awaited us, we passed a figure swathed in white which turned aside to let us pass, its face against the wall. Abu Beckr took it by the hand and introduced it as the mother of the dead boy’s mother, and a hand wrapped in a corner of a veil stole out, and for a moment just touched mine, but all the time the eyes were fixed upon the ground, after the style of Arab manners, which ordains that a woman must not look a strange man in the face. Something was mumbled in the nature of a complimentary phrase and then the sheeted figure slipped mysteriously away, but no doubt turned to look at the strange animals through some grating in the wall.
Lutaif explained that the honour done us was remarkable, and that no doubt Abu Beckr had stopped her to show how free from prejudice he was. The visit ended with more tea and a long talk, in which again I was assured the end was near, and that the Grand Vizir had made the life of every one intolerable, ruined the land, rendered the Sultan despicable, and that all educated men longed for the advent of some European power. Having heard the same tale from the Sherif of Tamasluoght, and as I knew both he and Abu Beckr were rich men and above all things feared attacks upon their wealth, I mentally resolved to talk the matter over with some Arab of the old school and hear his views.
Standing before the door, we found a soldier with a lantern waiting to see us home. We bid farewell to Abu Beckr, watching him stand beneath the archway of his house in his green robe and white burnouse, looking a figure out of the pages of the “Arabian Nights”; but with a scheming brain and subtle mind, able to hold his own with trained diplomatists and to defeat them with the natural craft implanted in him by a wise providence which arms the weak with lies, makes the strong brutal, and is apparently content to watch the struggle, after the fashion of an English tourist gloating upon a Spanish bull fight on a fine Sunday afternoon.
After a two days’ stay, with mules and horses well fed, I left the city, passed through the battlemented gates, and saw the walls, the gardens, palm trees, towers, and last of all the Kutubieh sink out of sight, then set my face westward to cross the hundred and thirty miles of stony plain which stretches almost to Mogador. After the first day’s ride, our animals showed signs of giving out, the starving at Thelata-el-Jacoub having reduced them so much in condition that the two days’ rest had done but little good.Those who have ridden tired horses, through stony wastes heated to boiling point by the sun’s rays, and without chance of finding water on the road, can estimate the pleasure of our ride. On the third day, just about noon, and after toiling painfully at a slow walk through interminable fields of stone, we reached the Zowia of Sidi-el-Mokhtar, where a portion of the tribe Ulad-el-Bousbaa (the sons of Lions) were established, the other portions of the tribe being respectively in Algeria and in the Sahara.
Nothing could possibly have been more desert-like than the surroundings of this tribe. On every side stones, stones, and still more stones. For vegetation thorny Zizyphus, hard wiry grass, stunted euphorbiaceæ, with colocynths growing here and there between the stones; a palm-tree at the well, and a gnarled sandarac tree, looking as if it had never known a shower, with the leaves as hard as pine needles, stood like a sentinel defying thirst. The Zowia itself seemed even more Eastern than most buildings of its kind, the walls merely baked mud, the towers but hardly overtopping them, and all the animals of a superior class to those raised by the ordinary Moors. The tribe ranks high for fighting qualities, as riders, shots, and swordsmen, and though small, can hold its own against all comers. The women, taller and thinner than the women of the Moors, were dressed in blue, after the desert fashion, and in procession walked to the well, with each one carrying an amphora upon her head.
The Sheikh, a Saharan Sherif, by name Mulai Othmar, was the best specimen of a high-caste Arab I had ever seen. Tall and broad-shouldered, lean and tanned by the sun to a fine tinge of old mahogany, grave and reserved, but courteous. Arabia itself could have produced no finer type of man. He asked us to dismount, put corn before our beasts, and sent a dishof couscousou for ourselves, sat and conversed, drank tea, but would not smoke, saying to smoke was shameful, but all the same he was not able to forbear to ask if tobacco was as strong as kief. Strength being the first object to an Arab, he not unnaturally believed that as our powder far exceeded theirs, so did tobacco far exceed their kief in strength, and seemed a little disappointed when I told him kief was stronger far than any cigarette.
During the two hot hours of noon, whilst the south wind blew like a blast out of a furnace, we squatted underneath the Zowia wall, shifting about to dodge the sun, as it moved westwards, and the Sherif stayed talking with us, as befits a man of blood. Though simply dressed in clean white clothes, he looked a prince, and all our men saluted him with ten times more respect than they had used towards either Abu Beckr or the Sherif of Tamasluoght. Much he imparted of the Sahara, its lore, traditions, told of the “wind drinkers,”[282a]who, in the ostrich hunts, carry their masters a hundred miles a day. Much did he tell us of the Tuaregs, who, being Berbers, are at constant feud with all the Arab tribes. In the Sahara no money circulated, but a good mare was bought for forty camels or two hundred sheep; guns came from Dakar, or St. Louis Senegal, and were called either “Francis,” or else “Mocatta,” though he could give no explanation of the latter term. Beyond San Louis was situate the mysterious Ben Joul,[282b]to which place he said the Inglis came, a nation at eternal enmity with the Francis, fair in complexion, and addicted to strong drink, but pleasant to deal with, and in business having but one word.
Morocco seemed to him too green and overgrownwith vegetation, so that a man grew dazzled when he looked at it. He thought no landscape half so fine as a long stretch of sand, flat and depressionless as is the sea, and with a stunted sandarac here and there, a few rare suddra bushes, and in the distance, an oasis, green as an emerald, with its wells, its melon fields, and clustering date palms, with their roots in water,[283]and feathery branches in the fire of the sun. No friend of French or English intervention was the Sherif Mulai Othmar; but a believer in the regeneration of the Moors, by a new intermixture of the desert blood which in times past has often been the salvation of the Arab race. From what he said the ancient Arab manners must have been preserved in all their purity in the Sahara, and, but for the introduction of villainous saltpetre, differ but little in essentials from a thousand years ago.
The low black tents of camels’ hair, the wandering life, the little Arab saddles, used to-day in Syria and in Arabia, and differing widely from the high-peaked saddle of Morocco, the finer breed of horses, and, above all, the pure speech of the Koreish not mixed with Spanish and with Berber words as is the Arabic of the Morocco Moors, all show the great tenacity with which the desert tribes have clung to usages and to traditions hallowed by custom and by time. Finding the Sherif spoke such good Arabic, Lutaif and I agreed to refer to his decision a question of literary interest which had engrossed us for the past few days. A controversy at the time was raging in Morocco amongst the men of letters, as to whether the wordMektub(“It is written”) might not be spelt “Mektab.”