Edmondo De Amicis

There are no two countries in the world more entirely different from each other than the two which are separated by the Straits of Gibraltar; and this diversity is peculiarly apparent to the traveller who approaches Tangiers from Gibraltar, where he has left the hurried, noisy, splendid life of a European city. At only three hours’ journey from thence the very name of our continent seems unknown; the word “Christian” signifies enemy; our civilization is ignored, or feared, or derided; all things, from the very foundations of social life to its most insignificant particulars, are changed, and every indication of the neighborhood of Europe has disappeared. You are in an unknown country, having no bonds of interest in it, and every thing to learn. From its shore the European coast can still be seen, but the heart feels itself at an immeasurable distance, as if that narrow tract of sea were an ocean, and those blue mountains an illusion. Within three hours a wonderful transformation has taken place around you.

The emotion, however, which one naturally feels on first setting foot on that immense and mysterious continent, which has moved the imagination since one’s childhood, is disturbed by the manner of disembarkation. Just as we began to see distinctly from the vessel the first white houses of Tangiers, a Spanish lady behind us cried out, in a voice of alarm, “What can all those people want?” I looked, and beheld behind the boats that were coming to take off the passengers, a crowd of half-naked, ragged Arabs, standing up to their hips in the water, and pointing out the ship with eager gestures, like a band of brigands rejoicing over their approaching prey. Not knowing who they were, or what they wanted, I descended with an anxious mind into the boat with the other passengers. When we had come to within twenty paces of the shore all this brick-colored crew swarmed into our boat and laid hands upon us, vociferating in Spanish and Arabic, and making us understand that the water being too low for us to land from the boats, we were to be transported upon their shoulders; which information dissipated our fears of robbery, and imposed in their stead the dread of vermin. The ladies were borne off in triumph upon stools, and I made my entrance into Africa upon the back of an old mulatto, with my chin resting upon his bare skull, and the tips of my toes in the water.

The mulatto, upon reaching the shore, unloaded me into the hands of an Arab porter, who, passing through one of the city gates, led me at a run through a deserted alley to an inn not far off, whence I almost immediately issued again with a guide, and proceeded to the more frequented streets.

I was struck at once, and more forcibly than I can express, with the aspect of the population. They all wear a kind of long white cloak of wool or linen, with a large pointed hood standing upright on the head, so that the city has the aspect of a vast convent of Dominican friars. Of all this cloaked company some are moving slowly, gravely, and silently about, as if they wished to pass unobserved; others are seated or crouched against the walls, in front of the shops, in corners of the houses, motionless and with fixed gaze, like the petrified populations of their legends. The walk, the attitude, the look, all are new and strange to me, revealing an order of sentiment and habit quite different from our own, another manner of considering time and life. These people do not seem to be occupied in any way, nor are they thinking of the place they are in, or of what is going on about them. All the faces wear a deep and dreamy expression, as if they were dominated by some fixed idea, or thinking of far-distant times and places, or dreaming with their eyes open. I had hardly entered the crowd when I was aware of a peculiar odor, one quite unknown to me among Europeans; it was not agreeable, and yet I began to inhale it with a vivid curiosity, as if it might explain some things to me. As I went on, the crowd, which at a distance had seemed uniform, presented many varieties. There passed before me faces white, black, yellow, and bronze; heads ornamented with long tresses of hair, and bare skulls as shining as metallic balls; men as dry as mummies; horrible old men; women with the face and entire person wrapped in formless rags; children with long braids pendant from the crown of the otherwise bare head; faces of sultans, savages, necromancers, anchorites, bandits; people oppressed by an immense sadness or a mortal weariness; none smiling, but moving one behind the other with slow and silent steps, like a procession of spectres in a cemetery. I passed through other streets, and saw that the city corresponded in every way to the population. It is a labyrinth of crooked lanes, or rather corridors, bordered by little square houses of dazzling whiteness, without windows, and with little doors through which one person can pass with difficulty,—houses which seem made to hide in rather than live in, with a mixed aspect of convent and prison. In many of the streets there is nothing to be seen save the white walls and the blue sky; here and there some small Moorish arch, some arabesque window, some strip of red at the base of a wall, some figure of a hand painted in black beside a door, to keep off evil influences. Almost all the streets are encumbered with rotten vegetables, feathers, rags, bones, and in some places dead dogs and cats, infecting the air. For long distances you meet no one but a group of Arab boys in pointed hoods, playing together, or chanting in nasal tones some verses from the Koran; or a crouching beggar, a Moor riding on a mule, an overloaded ass with bleeding back, driven by a half-naked Arab; some tailless mangy dog, or cat of fabulous meagreness. Transient odors of garlic, fish, or burning aloes salute you as you pass; and so you make the circuit of the city, finding everywhere the same dazzling whiteness, the same air of mystery, sadness, and ennui.

Coming out upon the only square that Tangiers can boast, which is cut by one long street that begins at the shore and crosses the whole town, you see a rectangular place, surrounded by shops that would be mean in the poorest of our villages. On one side there is a fountain constantly surrounded by blacks and Arabs drawing water in jars and gourds; on the other side sit all day long on the ground eight or ten muffled women selling bread. Around this square are the very modest houses of the different Legations, which rise like palaces from the midst of the confused multitude of Moorish huts. Here in this spot is concentrated all the life of Tangiers,—the life of a large village. The one tobacconist is here, the one apothecary, the one cafÉ,—a dirty room with a billiard-table,—and the one solitary corner where a printed notice may be sometimes seen. Here gather the half-naked street-boys, the rich and idle Moorish gentlemen, Jews talking about their business, Arab porters awaiting the arrival of the steamer, attachÉs of the Legations expecting the dinner-hour, travellers just arrived, interpreters, and impostors of various kinds. The courier arriving from Fez or Morocco with orders from the Sultan is to be met here; and the servant coming from the post, with his hands full of journals from London and Paris; the beauty of the harem and the wife of the minister; the Bedouin’s camel and the lady’s lapdog; the turban and the chimney-pot hat; and the sound of a piano from the windows of a consulate mingles with the lamentation chant from the door of a mosque. It is the point where the last wave of European civilization is lost in the great dead sea of African barbarism.

From the square we went up the main street, and passing by two old gates, came out at twilight beyond the walls of the town, and found ourselves in an open space on the side of a hill called Soc-de-Barra, or exterior market, because a market is held there every Sunday and Thursday. Of all the places that I saw in Morocco this is perhaps the one that impressed me most deeply with the character of the country. It is a tract of bare ground rough and irregular, with the tumble-down tomb of a saint, composed of four white walls, in the midst. Upon the top there is a cemetery, with a few aloes and Indian figs growing here and there; below are the turreted walls of the town. Near the gate, on the ground, sat a group of Arab women, with heaps of green-stuff before them; a long file of camels crouched about the saint’s tomb; farther on were some black tents, and a circle of Arabs seated around an old man erect in their midst, who was telling a story; horses and cows here and there; and above, among the stones and mounds of the cemetery, other Arabs, motionless as statues, their faces turned toward the city, their whole person in shadow, and the points of their hoods standing out against the golden twilight sky. A sad and silent peacefulness seemed to brood over the scene, such as cannot be described in words, but ought rather to be distilled into the ear drop by drop, like a solemn secret.

The guide awoke me from my reverie and re-conducted me to my inn, where my discomfiture at finding myself among strangers was much mitigated when I discovered that they were all Europeans and Christians, dressed like myself. There were about twenty persons at table, men and women, of different nationalities, presenting a fine picture of that crossing of races and interlacing of interests which go on in that country. Here was a Frenchman born in Algiers married to an Englishwoman from Gibraltar; there, a Spaniard of Gibraltar married to the sister of the Portuguese Consul; here again, an old Englishman with a daughter born in Tangiers and a niece native of Algiers; families wandering from one continent to the other, or sprinkled along the coast, speaking five languages, and living partly like Arabs, partly like Europeans. All through dinner a lively conversation went on, now in French, now in Spanish, studded with Arabic words, upon subjects quite strange to the ordinary talk of Europeans: such as the price of a camel; the salary of a pasha; whether the sultan were white or mulatto; if it were true that there had been brought to Fez twenty heads from the revolted province of Garet; when those religious fanatics who eat a live sheep were likely to come to Tangiers; and other things of the same kind that aroused within my soul the greatest curiosity. Then the talk ran upon European politics, with that odd disconnectedness that is always perceptible in the discussions of people of different nations—those big, empty phrases which they use in talking of the politics of distant countries, imagining absurd alliances and impossible wars. And then came the inevitable subject of Gibraltar—the great Gibraltar, the centre of attraction for all the Europeans along the coast, where their sons are sent to study, where they go to buy clothes, to order a piece of furniture, to hear an opera, to breathe a mouthful of the air of Europe. Finally came up the subject of the departure of the Italian embassy for Fez, and I had the pleasure of hearing that the event was of far greater importance than I had supposed; that it was discussed at Gibraltar, at Algeziras, Cadiz, and Malaga, and that the caravan would be a mile long; that there were several Italian painters with the embassy, and that perhaps there might even be a representative of the press—at which intelligence I rose modestly from the table, and walked away with majestic steps.

I wandered about Tangiers at a late hour that night. There was not a single light in street or window, nor did the faintest radiance stream through any loop-hole; the city seemed uninhabited, the white houses lay under the starlight like tombs, and the tops of the minarets and palm-trees stood out clear against the cloudless sky. The gates of the city were closed, and every thing was mute and lifeless. Two or three times my feet entangled themselves in something like a bundle of rags, which proved to be a sleeping Arab. I trod with disgust upon bones that cracked under my feet, and knew them for the carcase of a dog or cat; a hooded figure glided like a spectre close to the wall; another gleamed white for one instant at the bottom of an alley; and at a turning I heard a sudden rush and scamper, as if I had unwittingly disturbed some consultation. My own footstep when I moved, my own breathing when I stood still, were the only sounds that broke the stillness. It seemed as if all the life in Tangiers were concentrated in myself, and that if I were to give a sudden cry it would resound from one end of the city to the other like the blast of a trumpet. Meantime the moon rose, and shone upon the white walls with the splendor of an electric light. In a dark alley I met a man with a lantern, who stood aside to let me pass, murmuring some words that I did not understand. Suddenly a loud laugh made my blood run cold for an instant, and two young men in European dress went by in conversation; probably two attachÉs to the Legations. In a corner of the great square, behind the looped-up curtain of a dark little shop, a dim light betrayed a heap of whitish rags, from which issued the faint tinkle of a guitar, and a thin, tremulous, lamentable voice, that seemed brought by the wind from a great distance. I went back to my inn, feeling like a man who finds himself transported into some other planet.

The next morning I went to present myself to our chargÉ d’affaires, Commendatore Stefano Scovasso. He could not accuse me of not being punctual. On the 8th of April, at Turin, I received the invitation, with the announcement that the caravan would leave Tangiers on the 19th. On the morning of the 18th I was at the Legation. I did not know Signor Scovasso personally, but I knew something about him which inspired me with a great desire to make his acquaintance. From one of his friends whom I had seen before leaving Turin, I had heard that he was a man capable of riding from Tangiers to Timbuctoo without any other companions than a pair of pistols. Another friend had blamed his inveterate habit of risking his life to save the lives of others. When I arrived at the Legation I found him standing at the gate in the midst of a crowd of Arabs, all motionless, in attitudes of profound respect, seemingly awaiting his orders. Presenting myself, and being at once made a guest at head-quarters, I learned that our departure was deferred till the 1st of May, because there was an English embassy at Fez, and our horses, camels, mules, and a cavalry escort for the journey, were all to be sent from there. A transport-ship of our military marine, the Dora, then anchored at Gibraltar, had already carried to Larrace, on the Atlantic coast, the presents which King Victor Emanuel had sent to the Emperor of Morocco. The principal scope of our journey for the chargÉ d’affaires was to present credentials to the young Sultan, Muley el Hassen, who had ascended the throne in September, 1873. No Italian embassy had ever been at Fez, and the banner of United Italy had never before been carried into the interior of Morocco. Consequently, the embassy was to be received with extraordinary solemnities.

My first occupation when I found myself alone was to take observations of the house where I was to be a guest; and truly it was well worthy of notice. Not that the building itself was at all remarkable. White and bare without, it had a garden in front, and an interior court, with four columns supporting a covered gallery that ran all around the first floor. It was like a gentleman’s house at Cadiz or Seville. But the people and their manner of life in this house were all new to me. Housekeeper and cook were Piedmontese; there was a Moorish woman-servant of Tangiers, and a Negress from the Soudan with bare feet; there were Arab waiters and grooms dressed in white shirts; consular guards in fez, red caftan, and poignard; and all these people were in perpetual motion all day long. At certain hours there was a coming and going of black porters, interpreters, soldiers of the pasha, and Moors in the service of the Legation. The court was full of boxes, camp-beds, carpets, lanterns. Hammers and saws were in full cry, and the strange names of Fatima, Racma, Selam, Mohammed, Abd-er-Rhaman flew from mouth to mouth. And what a hash of languages! A Moor would bring a message in Arabic to another Moor, who transmitted it in Spanish to the housekeeper, who repeated it in Piedmontese to the cook, and so on. There was a constant succession of translations, comments, mistakes, doubts, mingled with Italian, Spanish, and Arabic exclamations. In the street, a procession of horses and mules; before the door, a permanent group of curious lookers-on, or poor wretches, Arabs and Jews, patient aspirants for the protection of the Legation. From time to time came a minister or a consul, before whom all the turbans and fezes bowed themselves. Every moment some mysterious messenger, some unknown and strange costume, some remarkable face, appeared. It seemed like a theatrical representation, with the scene laid in the East.

My next thought was to take possession of some book of my host’s that should teach me something of the country I was in, before beginning to study costume. This country, shut in by the Mediterranean, Algeria, the desert of Sahara, and the ocean, crossed by the great chain of the Atlas, bathed by wide rivers, opening into immense plains, with every variety of climate, endowed with inestimable riches in all the three kingdoms of nature, destined by its position to be the great commercial high-road between Europe and Central Africa, is now occupied by about 8,000,000 of inhabitants—Berbers, Moors, Arabs, Jews, Negroes, and Europeans—sprinkled over a vaster extent of country than that of France. The Berbers, who form the basis of the indigenous population—a savage, turbulent, and indomitable race—live on the inaccessible mountains of the Atlas, in almost complete independence of the imperial authority. The Arabs, the conquering race, occupy the plains—a nomadic and pastoral people, not entirely degenerated from their ancient haughty character. The Moors, corrupted and crossed by Arab blood, are in great part descended from the Moors of Spain, and, inhabiting the cities, hold in their hands the wealth, trade, and commerce of the country. The blacks, about 500,000, originally from the Soudan, are generally servants, laborers, and soldiers. The Jews, almost equal in number to the blacks, descend, for the most part, from those who were exiled from Europe in the Middle Ages, and are oppressed, hated, degraded, and persecuted here more than in any other country in the world. They exercise various arts and trades, and in a thousand ways display the ingenuity, pliability, and tenacity of their race, finding in the possession of money torn from their oppressors a recompense for all their woes. The Europeans whom Mussulman intolerance has, little by little, driven from the interior of the empire toward the coast, number less than 2,000 in all Morocco, the greater part inhabiting Tangiers, and living under the protection of the consular flags. This heterogeneous, dispersed, and irreconcilable population is oppressed rather than protected by a military government that, like a monstrous leech, sucks out all the vital juices from the State. The tribes and boroughs, or suburbs, obey their sheiks; the cities and provinces the cadi; the greater provinces the pasha; and the pasha obeys the Sultan—grand schereef, high priest, supreme judge, executor of the laws emanating from himself, free to change at his caprice money, taxes, weights and measures; master of the possessions and lives of his subjects. Under the weight of this government, and within the inflexible circle of the Mussulman religion, unmoved by European influences, and full of a savage fanaticism, everything that in other countries moves and progresses, here remains motionless or falls into ruin.

Commerce is choked by monopolies, by prohibitions upon exports and imports, and by the capricious mutability of the laws. Manufactures, restricted by the bonds laid upon commerce, have remained as they were at the time of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, with the same primitive tools and methods. Agriculture, loaded heavily with taxes, hampered in exportation of produce, and only exercised from sheer necessity, has fallen so low as no longer to merit the name. Science, suffocated by the Koran, and contaminated by superstition, is reduced to a few elements in the higher schools, such as were taught in the Middle Ages. There are no printing-presses, no books, no journals, no geographical maps; the language itself, a corruption of the Arabic, and represented only by an imperfect and variable written character, is becoming yearly more debased; in the general decadence the national character is corrupted; all the ancient Mussulman civilization is disappearing. Morocco, the last western bulwark of Islamism, once the seat of a monarchy that ruled from the Ebro to the Soudan, and from the Niger to the Balearic Isles, glorious with flourishing universities, with immense libraries, with men famous for their learning, with formidable fleets and armies, is now nothing but a small and almost unknown state, full of wretchedness and ruin, resisting with its last remaining strength the advance of European civilization, seated upon its foundations still, but confronted by the reciprocal jealousies of civilized states.

As for Tangiers, the ancient Tingis, which gave its name to Tingistanian Mauritania, it passed successively from the hands of the Romans into those of the Vandals, Greeks, Visigoths, Arabs, Portugese, and English, and is now a city of about 15,000 inhabitants, considered by its sister cities as having been “prostituted to the Christians,” although there are no traces of the churches and monasteries founded by the Portugese, and the Christian religion boasts there but one small chapel, hidden away among the legations.

I made in the streets of Tangiers a few notes, in preparation for my journey, and they are given here, because, having been written down under the impression of the moment, they are perhaps more effective than a more elaborate description.

I am ashamed when I pass a handsome Moor in gala dress. I compare my ugly hat with his large muslin turban, my short jacket with his ample white or rose-colored caftan—the meanness, in short, of my black and gray garments with the whiteness, the amplitude, the graceful dignified simplicity of his—and it seems to me that I look like a black beetle beside a butterfly. I stand sometimes at my window in contemplation before a portion of a pair of crimson drawers and a gold-colored slipper, appearing from behind a column in the square below, and find so much pleasure in it that I cannot cease from gazing. More than any thing else I admire and envy the caic, that long piece of snow-white wool or silk with transparent stripes which is twisted round the turban, falls down between the shoulders, is passed round the waist, and thrown up over one shoulder, whence it descends to the feet, softly veiling the rich colors of the dress beneath, and at every breath of wind swelling, quivering, floating, seeming to glow in the sun’s rays, and giving to the whole person a vaporous and visionary aspect.

No one who has not seen it can imagine to what a point the Arab carries the art of lying down. In corners where we should be embarrassed to place a bag of rags or a bundle of straw, he disposes of himself as upon a bed of down. He adapts himself to the protuberances, fills up the cavities, spreads himself upon the wall like a bas-relief, and flattens himself out upon the ground until he looks like a sheet spread out to dry. He will assume the form of a ball, a cube, or a monster without arms, legs, or head; so that the streets and squares look like battle-fields strewn with corpses and mutilated trunks of men.

The greater part have nothing on but a simple white mantle; but what a variety there is among them! Some wear it open, some closed, some drawn on one side, some folded over the shoulder, some tightly wrapped, some loosely floating, but always with an air; varied by picturesque folds, falling in easy but severe lines, as if they were posing for an artist. Every one of them might pass for a Roman senator. This very morning our artist discovered a marvellous Marcus Brutus in the midst of a group of Bedouins. But if one is not accustomed to wear it, the face is not sufficient to ennoble the folds of the mantle. Some of us bought them for the journey, and tried them on, and we looked like so many convalescents wrapped in bathing-sheets.

I have not yet seen among the Arabs a hunchback, or a lame man, or a rickety man, but many without a nose and without an eye, one or both, and the greater part of these with the empty orbit—a sight which made me shiver when I thought that possibly the globe had been torn out in virtue of the lex talionis, which is in vigor in the empire. But there is no ridiculous ugliness among these strange and terrible figures. The flowing ample vesture conceals all small defects, as the common gravity and the dark, bronzed skin conceals the difference of age. In consequence of this one encounters at every step men of indefinable age, of whom one cannot guess whether they are old or young; and if you judge them old, a lightning smile reveals their youth; and if you think them young, the hood falls back and betrays the gray locks of age.

The Jews of this country have the same features as those of our own, but their taller stature, darker complexion, and, above all, their picturesque attire, make them appear quite different. They wear a dress in form very like a dressing-gown, of various colors, generally dark, bound round the waist with a red girdle; a black cap, wide trousers that come a little below the skirts of the coat, and yellow slippers. It is curious to see what a number of dandies there are among them dressed in fine stuffs, with embroidered shirts, silken sashes, and rings and chains of gold; but they are handsome, dignified-looking men, always excepting those who have adopted the black frock-coat and chimney-pot hat. There are some pretty faces among the boys, but the sort of dressing-gown in which they are wrapped is not generally becoming at their age. It seems to me that there is no exaggeration in the reports of the beauty of the Jewesses of Morocco, which has a character of its own unknown in other countries. It is an opulent and splendid beauty, with large black eyes, broad low forehead, full red lips, and statuesque form,—a theatrical beauty that looks well from a distance, and produces applause rather than sighs in the beholder. The Hebrew women of Tangiers do not wear in public their rich national costume; they are dressed almost like Europeans, but in such glaring colors—blue, carmine, sulphur yellow, and grass-green—that they look like women wrapped in the flags of all nations. On the Saturdays, when they are in all their glory, the Jewish quarter presents a marked contrast to the austere solitude of the other streets.

The little Arab boys amuse me. Even those small ones who can scarcely walk are robed in the white mantle, and with their high-pointed hoods they look like perambulating extinguishers. The greater part of them have their heads shaven as bare as your hand, except a braided lock about a foot long pendent from the crown which looks as if it were left on purpose to hang them up by on nails, like puppets. Some few have the lock behind one ear or over the temple, with a bit of hair cut in a square or triangular form, the distinctive mark of the last born in the family. In general they have pretty, pale little faces, erect, slender bodies, and an expression of precocious intelligence. In the more frequented parts of the city they take no notice of Europeans; in the other parts they content themselves with looking intently at them with an air which says, “I do not like you.” Here and there is one who would like to be impertinent; it glitters in his eye and quivers on his lip; but rarely does he allow it to escape, not so much out of respect for the Nazarene as out of fear of his father, who stands in awe of the Legations. In any case the sight of a small coin will quiet them. But it will not do to pull their braided tails. I indulged myself once in giving a little pluck at a small image about a foot high, and he turned upon me in a fury, spluttering out some words which my guide told me meant, “May God roast your grandfather, accursed Christian!”

I have at last seen two saints,—that is to say, idiots or lunatics, because throughout all North Africa that man from whom God, in sign of predilection, has withdrawn his reason to keep it a prisoner in heaven, is venerated as a saint. The first one was in the main street, in front of a shop. I saw him from a distance and stayed my steps, for I knew that all things are allowed to saints, and had no desire to be struck on the back of the neck with a stick, like M. Sourdeau, the French consul, or to have the saint spit in my face, as happened to Mr. Drummond Hay. But the interpreter who was with me assured me that there was no danger now, for the saints of Tangiers had learned a lesson since the Legations had made some examples, and in any case the Arabs themselves would serve me as a shield, since they did not wish the saint to get into trouble. So I went on and passed before the scarecrow, observing him attentively. He was an old man, all face, very fat, with very long white hair, a beard descending on his breast, a paper crown upon his head, a ragged red mantle on his shoulders, and in his hand a small lance with gilded point. He sat on the ground with crossed legs, his back against a wall, looking at the passers-by with a discontented expression. I stopped before him; he looked at me. “Now,” thought I, “he will throw his lance.” But the lance remained quiet, and I was astonished at the tranquil and intelligent look in his eyes, and a cunning smile that seemed to gleam within them. They said, “Ah! you think I am going to make a fool of myself by attacking you, do you?” He was certainly one of those impostors who, having all their reason, feign madness in order to enjoy saintly privileges. I threw him some money, which he picked up with an air of affected indifference, and going on my way presently met another. This was a real saint. He was a mulatto, almost entirely naked, and less than human in visage, covered with filth from head to foot, and so thin that he seemed a walking skeleton. He was moving slowly along, carrying with difficulty a great white banner, which the street-boys ran to kiss, and accompanied by another poor wretch who begged from shop to shop, and two noisy rascals with drum and trumpet. As I passed near him he showed me the white of his eye, and stopped. I thought he seemed to be preparing something in his mouth, and stepped nimbly aside. “You were right,” said the interpreter; “because if he had spat on you, the only consolation you would have got from the Arabs would have been, 'Do not wipe it off, fortunate Christian! Thou art blessed that the saint has spat in thy face! Do not put away the sign of God’s benevolence!’”

This evening I have for the first time really heard Arab music. In the perpetual repetition of the same notes, always of a melancholy cast, there is something that gradually touches the soul. It is a kind of monotonous lamentation that finally takes possession of the thoughts, like the murmur of a fountain, the cricket’s chirp, and the beat of hammers upon anvils, such as one hears in the evening when passing near a village. I feel compelled to meditate upon it, and find out the signification of those eternal words for ever sounding in my ears. It is a barbaric music, full of simplicity and sweetness, that carries me back to primitive conditions, revives my infantile memories of the Bible, recalls to mind forgotten dreams, fills me with curiosity about countries and peoples unknown, transports me to great distances amid groves of strange trees, with a group of aged priests bending about a golden idol; or in boundless plains, in solemn solitudes, behind weary caravans of travellers that question with their eyes the burning horizon, and with drooping heads commend themselves to God. Nothing about me so fills me with a yearning desire to see my own country and my people as these few notes of a weak voice and tuneless guitar.

The oddest things in the world are the Moorish shops. They are one and all a sort of alcove about a yard high, with an opening to the street, where the buyer stands as at a window, leaning against the wall. The shopman is within, seated cross-legged; with a portion of his merchandise before him, and the rest on little shelves behind. The effect of these bearded old Moors, motionless as images in their dark holes, is very strange. It seems themselves, and not their goods, that are on exhibition, like the “living phenomena” of country fairs. Are they alive, or made of wood; and where is the handle to set them in motion? The air of solitude, weariness, and sadness, that hangs about them is indescribable. Every shop seems a tomb, where the occupant, already separated from the living world, silently awaits his death.

I have seen two children led in triumph after the solemn ceremony of circumcision. One was about six, and the other five years old. They were both seated upon a white mule, and were dressed in red, green, and yellow garments, embroidered with gold, and covered with ribbons and flowers, from which their little pallid faces looked forth, still wearing an expression of terror and amazement. Before the mule, which was gaily caparisoned and hung with garlands, went three drummers, a piper, and a cornet-player, making all the noise they could; to the right and left walked friends and parents, one of whom held the little ones firm in the saddle, while others gave them sweetmeats and caresses, and others, again, fired off guns, and leaped and shouted. If I had not already known what it meant, I should have thought that the two poor babies were victims being carried to the sacrifice; and yet the spectacle was not without a certain picturesqueness.

Festival Of The Circumcision.

Festival Of The Circumcision.

This evening I have been present at a singular metamorphosis of Racma, the minister’s black slave. Her companion came to call me, and conducted me on tip-toe to a door, which she suddenly threw open, exclaiming, “Behold Racma!” I could scarcely believe my eyes, for there stood the negress, whom I had been accustomed to see only in her common working dress, arrayed like the Queen of Timbuctoo, or a princess from some unknown African realm, brought thither on the miraculous carpet of Bisnagar. As I saw her only for a moment, I cannot say exactly how she was dressed. There was a gleam of snowy white, a glow of purple and crimson, and a shine of gold, under a large transparent veil, which, together with her ebony blackness of visage, composed a whole of barbaric magnificence and the richest harmony of color. As I drew near to observe more closely, all the pomp and splendor vanished under the gloomy Mohammedan sheet-like mantle, and the queen, transformed into a spectre, glided away, leaving behind her a nauseous odor of black savage which destroyed all my illusions.

Hearing a great outcry in the square, I looked out of my window and saw passing by a negro, naked to the waist and seated upon an ass, accompanied by some Arabs armed with sticks, and followed by a troop of yelling boys. At first I thought it some frolic, and took my opera-glass to look; but I turned away with a shudder. The white drawers of the negro were all stained with blood that dropped from his back, and the Arabs were soldiers who were beating him with sticks. He had stolen a hen. “Lucky fellow,” said my informant; “it appears they will let him off without cutting off his right hand.”

I have been seven days at Tangiers, and have not yet seen an Arab woman’s face, I seem to be in some monstrous masquerade, where all the women represent ghosts, wrapped in sepulchral sheets or shrouds. They walk with long, slow steps, a little bent forward, covering their faces with the end of a sort of linen mantle, under which they have nothing but a long chemise with wide sleeves, bound round the waist by a cord like a friar’s frock. Nothing of them is visible but the eyes, the hand that covers the face, the fingers tinted with henna, and the bare feet, the toes also tinted, in large yellow slippers. The greater part of them display only one eye, which is dark, and a small bit of yellowish-white forehead. Meeting a European in a narrow street, some of them cover the whole face with a rapid, awkward movement, and shrink close to the wall; others venture a timid glance of curiosity; and now and then one will launch a provoking look, and drop her eyes smiling. But in general they wear a sad, weary, and oppressed aspect. The little girls, who are not of an age to be veiled, are pretty, with black eyes, full faces, pale complexions, red lips, and small hands and feet. But at twenty they are faded, at thirty old, and at fifty decrepit.

I know now who are those fair-haired men, with ill-omened visages, who pass me sometimes in the streets, and look at me with such threatening eyes. They are those Rifans, Berbers by race, who have no law beyond their guns, and recognize no authority. Audacious pirates, sanguinary bandits, eternal rebels, who inhabit the mountains of the coast of Tetuan, on the Algerian frontier, whom neither the cannon of European ships nor the armies of the Sultan have ever been able to dislodge; the population, in short, of that famous Rif, where no foreigner may dare to set his foot, unless under the protection of the saints and the sheikhs; about whom all sorts of terrible legends are rife; and the neighboring peoples speak vaguely of their country, as of one far distant and unknown. They are often seen in Tangiers. They are tall and robust men, dressed in dark mantles, bordered with various colors. Some have their faces ornamented with yellow arabesques. All are armed with very long guns, whose red cases they twist about their heads like turbans; and they go in companies, speaking low, and looking about them from under their brows, like bravoes in search of a victim. In comparison with them, the wildest Arab seems a life-long friend.

We were at dinner in the evening, when some gunshots were heard from the square. Everybody ran to see, and from the distance a strange spectacle was visible. The street leading to the Soc-de-Barra was lighted up by a number of torches carried above the heads of a crowd that surrounded a large box or trunk, borne on the back of a horse. This enigmatical procession went slowly onward, accompanied by melancholy music, and a sort of nasal chant, piercing yells, the barking of dogs, and the discharge of muskets. I speculated for a moment as to whether the box contained a corpse, or a man condemned to death, or a monster, or some animal destined for the sacrifice, and then turned away with a sense of repugnance, when my friends, coming in, gave me the explanation of the enigma. It was a wedding procession, and the bride was in the box, being carried to her husband’s house.

A throng of Arabs, men and women, have just gone by, preceded by six old men carrying large banners of various colors, and all together singing in high shrill voices a sort of prayer, with woful faces and supplicating tones. In answer to my question, I am told that they are entreating Allah to send the grace of rain. I followed them to the principal mosque, and not being then aware that Christians are prohibited from entering a mosque, was about to do so, when an old Arab suddenly flew at me, and saying in breathless accents something equivalent to, “What would you do, unhappy wretch?” pushed me back against the wall, with the action of one who removes a child from the edge of a precipice. I was obliged to content myself with looking at the outside only of the sacred edifice, not much grieved, since I had seen the splendid and gigantic mosques of Constantinople, to be excluded from those of Tangiers, which, with the exception of the minarets, are without any architectural merit. Whilst I stood there, a woman behind the fountain in the court made a gesture at me. I might record that she blew me a kiss, but truth compels me to state that she shook her fist at me.

I have been up to the Casba, or castle, posted upon a hill that dominates Tangiers. It is a cluster of small buildings, encircled by old walls, where the authorities, with some soldiers, and prisoners are housed. We found no one but two drowsy sentinels seated before the gate, at the end of a deserted square, and some beggars stretched on the ground, scorched by the sun, and devoured by flies. From hence the eye embraces the whole of Tangiers, which extends from the foot of the hill of the Casba, and runs up the flanks of another hill. The sight is almost dazzled by so much snowy whiteness, relieved only here and there by the green of a fig-tree imprisoned between wall and wall. One can see the terraces of all the houses, the minarets of the mosques, the flags of the Legations, the battlements of the walls, the solitary beach, the deserted bay, the mountains of the coast—a vast, silent, and splendid spectacle, which would relieve the sting of the heaviest homesickness. Whilst I stood in contemplation, a voice, coming from above, struck upon my ear, acute and tremulous, and with a strange intonation. It was not until after some minutes’ search that I discovered upon the minaret of the mosque of the Casba, a small black spot, the muezzin, who was calling the faithful to prayer, and throwing out to the four winds of heaven the names of Allah and Mahomet. Then the melancholy silence reigned once more.

It is a calamity to have to change money in this country. I gave a French franc to a tobacconist, who was to give me back ten sous in change. The ferocious Moor opened a box and began to throw out handfuls of black, shapeless coins, until there was a heap big enough for an ordinary porter, counted it all quickly over, and waited for me to put it in my pocket. “Excuse me,” said I, trying to get back my franc, “I am not strong enough to buy any thing in your shop.” However, we arranged matters by my taking more cigars, and carrying off a pocketful of that horrible money. It appears that it is called flu, and is made of copper, worth one centime apiece now, and sinking every day in value. Morocco is inundated with it, and one need not inquire further when one knows that the Government pays with this money, but receives nothing but gold and silver. But every evil has its good side they say, and these flu, bane of commerce as they are, have the inestimable virtue of preserving the people of Morocco from the evil eye, thanks to the so-called rings of Solomon, a six-pointed star engraven on one side—an image of the real ring buried in the tomb of the great king, who, with it, commanded the good and evil genii.

There is but one public promenade, and that is the beach, which extends from the city to Cape Malabat, a beach covered with shells and refuse thrown up by the sea, and having numerous large pieces of water, difficult to guard against at high tide. Here are the Champs ElysÉes and the Cascine of Tangiers. The hour for walking is the evening toward sunset. At that time there are generally about fifty Europeans, in groups and couples, scattered at a hundred paces’ distance from each other, so that from the walls of the city individuals are easily recognized. I can see from my stand-point an English lady on horseback, accompanied by a guide; beyond, two Moors from the country; then come the Spanish Consul and his wife, and after them a saint; then a French nurse-maid with two children; then a number of Arab women wading through a pool, and uncovering their knees—the better to cover their faces; and further on, at intervals, a tall hat, a white hood, a chignon, and some one who must be the secretary of the Portuguese Legation, wearing the light trowsers that came yesterday from Gibraltar—for in this small European colony the smallest events are public property. If it were not disrespectful, I should say that they look like a company of condemned criminals out for a regulation walk, or hostages held by the pirates of a savage island, on the lookout for the vessel that is to bring their ransom.

It is infinitely easier to find your way in London than among this handful of houses that could all be put in one corner of Hyde Park. All these lanes, and alleys, and little squares, where one has scarcely room to pass, are so exactly like each other that nothing short of the minutest observation can enable you to distinguish one from the other. At present, I lose myself the very instant that I leave the main street and the principal square. In one of these silent corridors, in full daylight, two Arabs could bind and gag me, and cause me to vanish for ever from the face of the earth, without any one, save themselves, being the wiser. And yet a Christian can wander alone through this labyrinth, among these barbarians, with greater security than in our cities. A few European flags erected over a terrace, like the menacing index finger of a hidden hand, are sufficient to obtain that which a legion of armed men cannot obtain among us. What a difference between London and Tangiers! But each city has its own advantages. There, there are great palaces and underground railways, here, you can go into a crowd with your overcoat unbuttoned.

There is not in all Tangiers either cart or carriage; you hear no clang of bell, nor cry of itinerant vendor, nor sound of busy occupation; you see no hasty movement of persons or of things; even Europeans, not knowing what to do with themselves, stay for hours motionless in the square; every thing reposes and invites to repose. I myself, who have been here only a few days, begin to feel the influence of this soft and somnolent existence. Getting as far as the Soc-de-Barra, I am irresistibly impelled homeward; I read ten pages, and the book falls from my hand; if once I let my head fall back upon the easy chair, it is all over with me, and the very thought of care or occupation is sufficient to fatigue me. This sky, for ever blue, and this snow-white city form an image of unalterable peace, which, even with its monotony, becomes, little by little, the supreme end of life to all who inhabit this country.

Mahomet.

Among the numerous figures that buzzed about the doors of the Legation, there was a young Moor who had from the first attracted my eye; one of the handsomest men whom I saw in Morocco; tall and slender, with dark, melancholy eyes, and the sweetest of smiles; the face of an enamoured Sultan, whom Danas, the malign genius of the “Arabian Nights,” might have placed beside the Princess Badoura, instead of Prince Camaralzaman, sure that she would have made no objection to the change. He was called Mahomet, was eighteen years of age, and the son of a well-to-do Moor of Tangiers, a big and honest Mussulman protected by the Italian Legation, who, having been for some time menaced with death by the hand of an enemy, came every day with a frightened visage to claim the protection of the Minister. This Mahomet spoke a little Spanish, after the Moorish fashion, with all the verbs in the infinitive, and had thereby made acquaintance with my companions. He had been married only a few days. His father had given him a child of fifteen for a wife, who was as beautiful as he. But matrimony had not changed his habits; he remained, as we say, a Moor of the future—that is to say, he drank wine under the rose, smoked cigars, was tired of Tangiers, frequented the society of Europeans, and looked forward to a voyage to Spain. In these days, however, what drew him toward us was the desire of obtaining, through our intervention, permission to join the caravan, to go and see Fez, the great metropolis, his Rome, the dream of his childhood; and with this end he expended salutations, smiles, and grasps of the hand, with a prodigality and grace that would have seduced the entire imperial harem. Like most young Moors of his condition, he killed time in lounging from street to street, and from corner to corner, talking about the Minister’s new horses, or the departure of a friend for Gibraltar, or the arrival of a ship, or any topic that came uppermost; or else he stood like a statue, silent and motionless, in a corner of the market-place, with his thoughts no one knows where. With this handsome idler are bound up my recollections of the first Moorish house in which I put my foot, and the first Arab dinner at which I risked my palate. His father one day invited me to dinner, thus fulfilling an old wish of mine. Late one evening, guided by an interpreter, and accompanied by four servants of the Legation, I found myself at an arabesque door, which opened as if by enchantment at our approach; and crossing a white and empty chamber, we entered the court of the house. The first impression produced was that of a great confusion of people, a strange light and a marvellous pomp of color. We were received by the master of the house and his sons and relations, all crowned with large white turbans; behind them were some hooded servants; beyond, in the dark corners, and peeping through door-ways, the curious faces of women and children; and despite the number of persons, a profound silence. I thought myself in a room, until raising my eyes, I saw the stars, and found that we were in a central court, upon either side of which opened two long and lofty chambers without windows, each having a great arched door-way closed only by a curtain. The external walls were white as snow, the arches of the doors dentellated, the pavements in mosaic; here and there a window, and a niche for slippers. The house had been decorated for our coming; carpets covered the pavement; great chandeliers stood on either side of the doors, with red, yellow and green candles; on the tables were flowers and mirrors. The effect was very strange. There was something of the air of church decorations, and something of the ballroom and the theatre; artificial, but very pretty and graceful, and the distribution of light and arrangement of colors were very effective.

Some moments were spent in salutations and vigorous grasps of the hand, and we were then invited to visit the bridal chamber. It was a long, narrow, and lofty room, opening on the court. At the end, on either side, stood the two beds, decorated with a rich, dark red stuff, with coverlets of lace; thick carpets covered the pavement, and hangings of red and yellow concealed the walls. Between the two beds was suspended the wife’s wardrobe: bodices, petticoats, drawers, gowns of unknown form, in all the colors of the rainbow, in wool, silk, and velvet, bordered and starred with gold and silver; the trousseau of a royal doll; a sight to turn the head of a ballet-dancer, and make a columbine die with envy. From thence we passed into the dining-room. Here also were carpets and hangings, flowers, tall chandeliers standing on the floor, cushions and pillows of all colors spread against the walls, and two gorgeous beds, for this was the nuptial chamber of the parents. The table stood all prepared near one of the beds, contrary to the Arab custom, which is to put the dishes on the floor and eat with the fingers; and upon it glittered an array of bottles, charged, to remind us, in the midst of a Moorish banquet, that Christians existed. Before taking our places at table, we seated ourselves cross-legged on the carpets, around the master’s secretary, who prepared tea before us, and made us take, according to custom, three cups a-piece, excessively sweetened, and flavored with mint; and between each cup we caressed the shaven head and braided tail of a pretty four-year-old boy, Mahomet’s youngest brother, who furtively counted the fingers on our hands, in order to make sure that we had the same number as a Mussulman, and no more. After tea we took our seats at table, and the master, being entreated, seated himself also; and then the Arab dishes, objects of our intense curiosity, began to circulate. I tasted the first with simple faith. Great heaven! My first impulse was to attack the cook. All the contractions that can be produced upon the face of a man who is suddenly assailed by an acute colic, or who hears the news of his banker’s failure, were, I think, visible on mine. I understood in one moment how it was that a people who ate in that way should believe in another God, and take other views of human life than ours. I cannot express what I felt otherwise than by likening myself to some unhappy wretch who is forced to satisfy his appetite upon the pomatum pots of his barber. There were flavors of soaps, pomades, wax, dyes, cosmetics—every thing that is least proper to be put in a human mouth. At each dish we exchanged glances of wonder and dismay. No doubt the original material was good enough—chickens, mutton, game, fish; large dishes of a very fine appearance, but all swimming in most abominable sauces, and so flavored and perfumed that it would have seemed more natural to attack them with a comb rather than with a fork. However, we were in duty bound to swallow something, and the only eatable thing seemed to be mutton on a spit. Not even the famous cÙscÙssÙ, the national Moorish dish, which bore a perfidious resemblance to our Milanese risotto, could we get down without a pang. There was one among us who managed to taste of all; a consolatory fact which shows that there are still great men in Italy. At every mouthful our host humbly interrogated us by a look; and we, opening our eyes very wide, answered in chorus, “Excellent! exquisite!” and hastened to swallow a glass of wine to revive our drooping courage. At a certain moment there burst out in the court-yard a gust of strange music that made us all spring to our feet. There were three musicians come, according to Moorish custom, to enliven the banquet: three large-eyed Arabs, dressed in white and red; one with a theorbo, another with a mandolin, and a third with a small drum. All three were seated on the ground in the court-yard, near a niche where their slippers were deposited. Little by little, our libations, the odor of the flowers, and that of aloes burning in carved perfume-burners of Fez, and that strange Arab music, which, by dint of repetition, takes possession of the fancy with its mysterious lament, all overcame us with a sort of taciturn and fantastic dreaminess, under the influence of which we felt our heads crowned with turbans, and visions of sultanas floated before our eyes.

The dinner over, all rose and spread themselves about the room, the court, or the vestibule, looking into every corner with childlike curiosity. At every dark angle stood an Arab wrapped in his white mantle like a statue. The door of the bridal chamber had been closed by a curtain, and through the interstices a great movement of veiled heads could be seen. Lights appeared and disappeared at the upper windows, and low voices and the rustle of garments were heard on all sides. About and above us fermented an invisible life, bearing witness that though within the walls we were without the household; that beauty, love, the family soul, had taken refuge in the penetralia; that we were the spectacle while the house remained a mystery. At a certain moment the Minister’s housekeeper came out of a small door, where she had been visiting the bride, and, passing by us, murmured, “Ah, if you could see her! What a rosebud! What a creature of paradise!” And the sad lamenting music went on, and the perfumed aloe smoke arose, and our fancies grew more and more active, more so than ever, when we issued forth from that air filled with light and perfume, and plunged into a dark and solitary alley, lighted only by one lantern, and surrounded by profoundest silence.

One evening we received the not unexpected intelligence that the next day the Aissawa would enter the city. The Aissawa are one of the principal religious confraternities of Morocco, founded, like the others, under the inspiration of God, by a saint called Sidi-Mohammed-ben-Aissa, born at MekÏnez two centuries ago. His life is a long and confused legend of miracles and fabulous events, variously related. The Aissawa propose to themselves to obtain the special protection of heaven, praying continually, exercising certain practices peculiar to themselves, and keeping alive in their hearts a certain religious fever, a divine fury, which breaks out in extravagant and ferocious manifestations. They have a great mosque at Fez, which is the central house of the order, and from thence they spread themselves every year over the provinces of the empire, gathering together as they go those members of the brotherhood who are in the towns and villages. Their rites, similar to those of the howling and whirling Dervishes of the East, consist in a species of frantic dances, interspersed with leaps, yells, and contortions, in the practice of which they grow ever more furious and ferocious, until, losing the light of reason, they crush wood and iron with their teeth, burn their flesh with glowing coals, wound themselves with knives, swallow mud and stones, brain animals and devour them alive and dripping with blood, and finally fall to the ground insensible. The Aissawa whom I saw at Tangiers did not go to quite such extremities, and probably they seldom do, but they did quite enough to leave an indelible impression on my memory.

The Belgian Minister invited us to see the spectacle from the terrace of his house, which looked over the principal street of Tangiers, where the Aissawa generally passed on their way to their mosque. They were to pass at ten o’clock in the morning, coming in at the Soc-de-Barra. At nine the street was already full of people, and the tops of the houses crowded with Arab and Jewish women in all the colors of the rainbow, giving to the white terraces the look of great baskets of flowers. At the given hour all eyes were turned toward the gate at the end of the street, and in a few minutes the leaders of the procession appeared. The street was so thronged with people that for some time nothing could be seen but a waving mass of hooded heads, amid which shone out a few shaven skulls. Above them floated here and there a banner; and now and then a cry as of many voices broke forth. The crowd moved forward slowly. Little by little a certain order and regularity in the movement of all these heads became visible. The first formed a circle; others beyond a double file; others again beyond another circle; then the first in their turn broke into a double line, the second formed in a circle, and so on. But I am not very sure of what I say, because in the eager curiosity which possessed me to observe single figures it is possible that the precise laws of the general movement escaped me. My first impression as they arrived below our terrace was one of pity and horror combined. There were two lines of men, facing each other, wrapped in mantles and long white shirts, holding each other by the hands, arms, or shoulders, and, with a rocking swaying motion, stepping in cadence, throwing their heads backward and forward, and keeping up a low eager murmur, broken by groans, and sighs, and sobs of rage and terror. Only “The Possessed,” by Rubens, “The Dead Alive,” by Goya, and “The Dead Man Magnetized” of Edgar Poe, could give an idea of those figures. There were faces livid and convulsed, with eyes starting from the sockets, and foaming mouths; faces of the fever-stricken and the epileptic; some illuminated by an unearthly smile, some showing only the whites of their eyes, others contracted as by atrocious spasms, or pallid and rigid, like corpses. From time to time, making a strange gesture with their outstretched arms, they all burst out together in a shrill and painful cry, as of men in mortal agony; then the dance forward began again, with its accompaniment of groans and sobs, while hoods and mantles, wide sleeves and long disordered hair, streamed on the wind, and whirled about them with snake-like undulations. Some rushed from one side to the other, staggering like drunken men, or beating themselves against walls and doors; others, as if rapt in ecstasy, moved along, stiff and rigid, with head thrown back, eyes half closed, and arms swinging; and some, quite exhausted, unable any longer to yell, or to keep on their feet, were held up under the arms by their companions, and dragged along with the crowd. The dance became every moment more frantic, and the noise more deafening, while a nauseous smell came up from all those bodies like the odor of a menagerie of wild beasts. Here and there a convulsed visage turned upward toward our terrace, and a pair of staring eyes were fixed on mine, constraining me to turn away my face. The spectacle affected me in different ways. Now it seemed a great masquerade, and tempted me to laugh; then it was a procession of madmen, of creatures in the delirium of fever, of drunken wretches, or those condemned to death and striving to deaden their own terror, and my heart swelled with compassion; and again, the savage grandeur of the picture pleased my artistic sense. But gradually my mind accepted the inner meaning of the rite, and I comprehended what all of us have more or less experienced—the spasms of the human soul under the dread pressure of the Infinite; and unconsciously my thoughts explained the mystery: Yes; I feel Thee, mysterious and tremendous Power; I struggle in the grasp of the invisible hand; the sense of Thee oppresses me, I cannot contain it; my heart is dismayed, my reason is lost, my garment of clay is rent. And still they went by, a pallid and dishevelled mass, raising voices of pain and supplication, and seeming in their last agony. One old man, an image of distracted Lear, broke from the ranks, and tried to dash his head against a wall, his companions holding him back. A youth fell head foremost to the ground, and remained there insensible. Another, with streaming hair and face hidden in his hands, went by with long steps, his body bent almost to the earth, like one accursed of God. Bedouins were among them, Berbers, blacks, mummies, giants, satyrs, cannibal faces, faces of saints, of birds of prey, of Indian idols, furies, fauns, devils. There were between three and four hundred, and in half an hour they had all gone by. The last were two women (for they also belong to the order), looking as if they had been buried alive, and had escaped from their tomb,—two animated skeletons dressed in white, with hair streaming over their faces, straining eyes, and mouths white with foam, exhausted, but still moving along with the unconscious action of machines; and between them marched a gigantic old man, like an aged sorcerer. Dressed in a long white shirt, and stretching out two bony arms, he placed his hands now on one head, now on the other, with a gesture of protection, and helped them to rise when they fell. Behind these three spectres came a throng of armed Arabs, women, beggars, and children; and all the mass of barbarism and horrid human misery broke into the square, and was dispersed in a few minutes about the city.

Another fine spectacle that we had at Tangiers was that of the festival of the birth of Mahomet; and it made the greater impression upon me that I saw it unexpectedly. Returning from a walk on the sea-shore, I heard some shots in the direction of the Soc-de-Barra. I turned my steps in that direction, and at first found it difficult to recognize the place. The Soc-de-Barra was transfigured. From the walls of the city up to the summit of the hill swarmed a crowd of white-robed Arabs, all in the highest state of animation. There might have been about three thousand persons, but so scattered and grouped that they appeared innumerable. It was a most singular optical illusion. On all the heights around, as upon so many balconies, were groups seated in Oriental fashion, motionless, and turned toward the lower part of the Soc, where the crowd—divided into two portions—left a large space free for the evolutions of a company of cavalry, who, ranged in a line, galloped about, discharging their long guns in the air. On the other side an immense circle of Arab men and women were looking on at the games of ball-players, fencers, serpent-charmers, dancers, singers and musicians, and soldiers. Upon the top of the hill, under a conical tent open in front, could be discerned the enormous white turban of the Vice-Governor of Tangiers, who presided at the festival, seated on the ground in the midst of a circle of Moors. From above could be seen in the crowd the soldiers of the Legations, dressed in their showy red caftans, a few tall hats, and European parasols, and one or two artists, sketch-book in hand, while Tangiers and the sea formed a background to the whole. The discharge of musketry, the yells of the cavalry, the tinkle of the water-sellers’ bells, the joyful cries of the women, the noise of pipes, horns, and drums, made up a fitting accompaniment to the strange and savage spectacle, bathed in the burning noon-day light.

My curiosity impelled me to look everywhere at once, but a sudden scream of admiration from a group of women made me turn to the horsemen. There were twelve of them, all of tall stature, with pointed red caps, white mantles, and blue, orange, and red caftans, and among them was a youth, dressed with feminine elegance, the son of the Governor of Rif. They drew up in a line against the wall of the city, with faces toward the open country. The son of the Governor, in the middle, raised his hand, and all started in full career. At first there was a slight hesitation and confusion, but in a moment the twelve horsemen formed but one solid serried line, and skimmed over the ground like a twelve-headed and many-colored monster devouring the way.

Nailed to their saddles, with heads erect, and white mantles streaming in the wind of their career, they lifted their guns above their heads, and, pressing them against their shoulders, discharged them all together, with a yell of triumph, and then vanished in a cloud of smoke and dust. A few moments after they came back slowly and in disorder—the horses covered with foam and blood, their riders bearing themselves proudly, and then they began again. At every new discharge, the Arab women, like ladies at a tourney, saluted them with a peculiar cry, that is a rapid repetition of the monosyllable JÙ (or in English yÙ) like a sort of joyous trill.

We went to look at the ball-players. About fifteen Arab boys and men—some of the latter with white beards—some with sabres, some with guns slung across their shoulders, were tossing a leathern ball about as big as an orange. One would take it, let it fall, and send it into the air with a blow of his foot; all the others rushed to catch it before it fell. The one who caught it repeated the action of the first; and so the group of players, always following the ball, were in constant movement from one point to another. The curious part of it was that there was not a word, nor a cry, nor a smile among them. Old men and boys, all were equally serious and intent upon the game, as upon some necessary labor, and only their panting breath and the sound of their feet could be heard.

At a few paces farther on, within another circle of spectators, some negroes were dancing to the sound of a pipe and a small conical drum, beaten with a stick in the shape of a half moon. There were eight of them—big, black, and shining like ebony, with nothing on them but a long white shirt, bound round the waist by a thick green cord. Seven of them held each other’s hand in a ring, while the eighth was in the middle, and all danced together, or rather accompanied the music, without moving from their places, but with a certain indescribable movement of the hips, and that satyr-like grin, that expression of stupid beatitude and bestial voluptuousness, which is peculiar to the black race. Whilst I stood looking on at this scene, two boys, about ten years of age, among the spectators, gave me a taste of the ferocity of Arab blood. They suddenly—and for some unknown reason—fell upon each other, and clinging together like a couple of young tigers, bit, clawed, and scratched, with a fury that was horrible to see. Two strong men had as much as they could do to separate them, and they were borne off all bloody and torn, and struggling to attack each other again.

The fencers made me laugh. They were four, fencing in couples, with sticks. The extravagance and awkwardness of this performance are not to be described, In other cities in Morocco I afterward saw the same thing, so it is evidently the native school of fencing. The leaps, contortions, attitudes, and waving of arms, were beyond words, and all done with a self-satisfied air that was enough to make one fall upon them with their own sticks and send them flying. The Arab spectators, however, stood about with open mouths, and frequently glanced at me, as if to enjoy my wonder and admiration, while I, willing to content them, affected to be much delighted. Then some of them drew aside that I might see them better, and I presently found myself surrounded and pressed on all sides by the Arabs, and was able to satisfy in full my desire to study the race in all its more intimate peculiarities. A soldier of the Italian Legation, seeing me in these straits, and thinking me an involuntary prisoner, came to my rescue, rather against my will, with fist and elbows.

The circle of the story-teller was the most interesting, though the smallest of all. I arrived just at the moment when he had finished the usual inaugural prayer, and was beginning his narrative. He was a man of about fifty, almost black, with a jet-black beard and gleaming eyes, wearing, like all of his profession in Morocco, an ample white robe, bound round the waist with a camel’s-hair girdle, giving him the majestic air of an antique priest. He spoke in a high voice, and slowly, standing erect within the circle of listeners, while two musicians with drum and hautboy kept up a low accompaniment. I could not understand a word, but his face, voice, and gestures, were so expressive that I managed to gather something of the meaning of his story. He seemed to be relating a tale of a journey. Now he imitated the action of a tired horse, and pointed to a distant and immense horizon; then he seemed to seek about for a drop of water, and his arms and head dropped as if in complete exhaustion. Suddenly he discovers something at a distance, appears uncertain, believes, and doubts the evidence of his senses—again believes, is re-animated, hastens his flagging steps, arrives, gives thanks to Heaven, and throws himself on the earth with a long breath of satisfaction, smiling with pleasure in the shade of a delightful oasis. The audience meanwhile stood without breath or motion, suspended on the lips of the orator, and reflecting in their faces his every word and gesture. The ingenuousness and freshness of feeling that are hidden under their hard and savage exterior became plainly visible. As the story-teller became more fervent in his narrative, and raised his voice, the two musicians blew and beat with increasing fury, and the listeners drew closer together in the intensity of their interest, until, finally, the whole culminated in one grand burst; the musicians threw their instruments into the air, and the crowd dispersed, and gave place to another circle.

There were three performers who had drawn a large audience about them. One played on a sort of bagpipes, another on a tambourine with bells, and the third on an extraordinary instrument compounded of a clarionet and two horns, which gave forth most discordant sounds. All three men were bandy-legged, tall, and with backs bent into a curve. Wrapped in a few rags, they stood side by side close together as if they had been bound one to the other, and, playing an air which they had probably played for fifty years or more, they marched around the square. Their movement was peculiar—something between walking and dancing,—and their gestures so extraordinary, made as they were with mechanical regularity and all together, that I imagine them to have expressed some idea founded in some characteristic peculiarity of the Arab people. Those three, streaming with heat from every pore, played and marched about for more than an hour in the fashion I have described, with unalterable gravity, while a hundred or so of lookers-on stood, with the sun in their eyes, giving no outward sign either of pleasure or of weariness.

The noisiest circle was that of the soldiers. There were twelve, old and young, some with white caftans, some in shirts only, one with a fez, another in a hood, and all armed with flint muskets as long as lances, into which they put the powder loose, like all their fellows in Morocco, where the cartridge is not in use. An old man directed the manoeuvres. They ranged themselves in two rows of six each, facing one another. At a signal, all changed places with each other, running and putting one knee to the ground. Then one of them struck up, in a shrill falsetto voice, a sort of chant, full of trills and warblings, which lasted a few minutes, and was listened to in perfect silence. Then suddenly they all bounded to their feet in a circle, and with an immense leap and a shout of joy, fired off their guns muzzle downward. The rapidity, the fury, and something madly festive and diabolically cheerful in the performance, are not to be described. Among the spectators near me was a little Arab girl about ten years old, not yet veiled, one of the prettiest little faces I saw in Tangiers, of a delicate pale bronze in color, who, with her large blue eyes full of wonder, gazed at a spectacle much more marvellous to her than that of the soldiers’ dance: she saw me take off my gloves, which Arab boys believe to be a sort of second skin that Christians have on their hands, and can remove at pleasure without inconvenience or pain.

I hesitated about going to see the serpent-charmers, but curiosity overcame repugnance. These so-called magicians belong to the confraternity of the Aissawa, and pretend to have received from their patron, Ben Aissa, the privilege of enduring uninjured the bite of the most venomous beasts. Many travellers, in fact, most worthy of belief, assert that they have seen these men bitten severely, until the blood flowed, by serpents that a moment before had shown the fatal effect of their venom upon some animal. The Aissawa whom I saw gave a horrible but bloodless spectacle. He was a little fellow, muscular, with a cadaverous and stern countenance, the air of a Merovingian king, and dressed in a sort of blue shirt that came down to his heels. When I drew near he was engaged in jumping grotesquely about a goat-skin spread on the ground, upon which was a sack containing the serpents; and as he jumped he sang, to the accompaniment of a flute, a melancholy song that was perhaps an invocation to his saint. The song finished, he chattered and gesticulated for some time, trying to get some money thrown to him, and then kneeling down before the goat-skin, he thrust his arm into the sack and drew out a long greenish snake, extremely lively, and carried it round, handling it very carefully, for the spectators to see. This done, he began to twist it about in all directions, and generally use it as if it had been a rope. He seized it by the neck, he suspended it by the tail, he bound it round his head like a fillet, he hid it in his bosom, he made it pass through the holes in the edge of a tambourine, he threw it on the ground and set his foot upon, it, he stuck it under his arm. The horrible beast erected its head, darted out its tongue, twisted itself about with those flexible, odious, abject movements that seem the expression of perfidious baseness; and all the rage that burned in its body seemed to shoot in sparkles from its small eyes; but I could not see that it ever once attempted to bite the hand that held it. After this, the Aissawa seized the serpent by the neck, and fixed a small bit of iron in its mouth, so as to keep it open and display the fangs to the spectators; and then taking its tail between his teeth, he proceeded to bite it, while the beast went through violent contortions; and I left the place in horror and disgust.

At that moment our chargÉ d’affaires appeared in the Soc. The Vice-Governor beheld him from the hill, ran to meet him, and conducted him under the tent, where all the members of the future caravan, myself included, speedily assembled. Then came soldiers and musicians, and an immense semi-circle of Arabs formed itself in front of the tent, the men in front, the gentle sex in groups behind; and then began a wild concert of songs, dances, yells, and gunshots, which lasted for more than an hour, in the midst of dense clouds of smoke, the sounds of barbaric music, the enthusiastic shouts of the women and children, the paternal satisfaction of the Vice-Governor, and our great amusement. Before it was over, the chargÉ d’affaires put some coins into the hand of an Arab soldier, to be given to the director of the spectacle, and the soldier presently returning, delivered the following odd form of thanks, translated into Spanish:—“The Italian Ambassador has done a good action; may Allah bless every hair of his beard!”

The strange festival lasted until sunset. Three water-sellers were sufficient to satisfy the needs of all that crowd, exposed all day to the rays of the sun of Africa. One marengo was perhaps the utmost of the sum that circulated in that concourse of people. Their only pleasures were to see and hear. There was no love-making, no drunkenness, no knife-play,—nothing in common with the holidays of civilization.

The country about Tangiers is not less curious to see than the city. Around the walls extends a girdle of gardens, belonging for the most part to the ministers and consuls, and rather neglected, but rich in luxuriant vegetation. There may be seen long files of aloes, like gigantic lances bound up in sheaves of enormous curved dagger blades, for such is the shape of their leaves. The points, with the fibre attached, are used by the Arabs to sew up wounds. There is the Indian fig—in the Moorish tongue, kermus del Inde—very tall, with leaves an inch in thickness, and growing so thickly as to obstruct the paths; the common fig, under whose shadow ten tents could be erected; oaks, acacias, oleanders, and shrubs of every sort, that interlace their branches with those of the highest trees, and with the ivy, the vine, the cane, and the thorn, form a tangled mass of verdure under which ditch and footpath are entirely concealed. In some places one has to grope one’s way, and pass from one enclosure to another through thick, thorny hedges, over prostrate fences, in the midst of grass and flowers as high as one’s waist, and no living creature to be seen. A small white house, and a well, with a wheel by means of which the water is sent flowing through little trenches dug for the purpose, are the only objects which indicate the presence of poverty and labor. Sometimes, if the captain of the staff, who was a clever guide, had not been with me, I should have lost my way in the midst of that wild vegetation; and we often had to call out, as in a labyrinth, to prevent our losing each other. It was a pleasure to me to swim amid the greenery, opening the way with hands and feet, with the joyous excitement of a savage returned from slavery to his native forest.

Beyond this girdle of gardens there are no trees, or houses, or hedges, or any indication of boundaries; there are only hills, green valleys, and undulating plains, with an occasional herd of cattle pasturing and without any visible herdsman, or a horse turned loose. Once only did I see any tilling of the ground. An Arab was driving an ass and a goat, harnessed to a very small plough, of a strange shape, such as might have been in use four thousand years ago, and which turned up a scarcely visible furrow in the stony, weedy earth. I have been assured that it is not unusual to see a donkey and a woman ploughing in company, and this will give an idea of the state of agriculture in Morocco. The only attempt at manuring is to burn the straw left after the grain is gathered; and the only care taken not to exhaust the earth, is to leave it every third year to grow grass for pasture, after having grown grain, and buckwheat or maize, in the two preceding years. In spite of this, however, the ground becomes impoverished after a few years, and then the husbandman leaves it, and seeks another field, returning, after a time, to the old one; and so but a very small part of the arable land is under cultivation at one time, whereas if it were even badly cultivated, it would return a hundred-fold the seed thrown in it.

The prettiest excursion we made was that to Cape Spartel, the Ampelusium of the ancients, which forms the north-western extremity of the African continent, a mountain of gray stone, about three hundred mÈtres in height, rising abruptly from the sea, and opening underneath into vast caverns, the larger of which were consecrated to Hercules: Specus Herculi sacer. Upon the summit of this mountain stands the famous lighthouse erected a few years ago, and maintained by contributions from most of the European States. We climbed to the top of the tower, where the great lantern sends its beneficent rays to a distance of five-and-twenty miles. From thence the eye embraces two seas and two continents. There can be seen the last waters of the Mediterranean and the horizon of the Atlantic—the sea of darkness, Bar-el-Dolma, as the Arabs call it—beating at the foot of the rock; the Spanish coast, from Cape Trafalgar to Cape Algesiras; the African coast, from the Mediterranean to the mountains of Ceuta, the septem fratres of the Romans; and far in the distance, faintly outlined, the enormous rock of Gibraltar—eternal sentinel of that port of the old continent, mysterious terminus of the antique world, become the “Favola vila ai naviganti industri.”

In this expedition we encountered but few persons, for the most part Arabs on foot, who passed almost without looking at us, and sometimes a Moor on horseback, some personage important either for his wealth or his office, accompanied by a troop of armed followers, who looked contemptuously at us as they passed. The women muffled their faces even more carefully than in the city, some muttering, and others turning their backs abruptly upon us. Here and there an Arab would stop before us, look fixedly at us, murmur a few words that sounded as if he were asking a favor, and then go on his way without looking back. At first we did not understand, but it was explained that they were asking us to pray to God for some favor for them. It seems that there is a superstition much in vogue among the Arabs, that the prayers of a Mussulman being very grateful to God, He generally delays granting what they ask for, in order that He may prolong the pleasure of hearing the prayer; whilst the prayer of an infidel dog, like a Hebrew or a Christian, is so hateful to Him, that He grants it at once, ipso facto, in order to be rid of it. The only friendly faces we saw were those of some Jewish boys who were scampering about on donkeys, and who threw us a cheerful “Buenos dias, Caballeros!” as they galloped by.

In spite, however, of the new and varied character of our life at Tangiers, we were all impatience to leave it, in order to get back in the month of June, before the great heats began. The chargÉ d’affaires had sent a messenger to Fez to announce that the embassy was ready; but ten days at least must pass before he could return. Private notices informed us that the escort was on its way, others that it had not yet started. Uncertain and contradictory rumors prevailed, as if the longed-for Fez were distant two thousand miles from the coast, instead of about one hundred and forty miles; and this, from one point of view, was rather agreeable, because our fifteen days’ journey thus assumed in our fancy the proportions of a long and adventurous voyage, and Fez seemed mysteriously attractive. The strange things, too, which were related by those who had been there with former embassies, about the city, its people, and the dangers of the expedition, all combined to excite our expectations. They told how they had been surrounded by thousands of horsemen, who saluted them with a tempest of shots, so near as almost to scorch their skins and blind them, and that they could hear the balls whistle by their ears; that in all probability some of us Italians would be shot in the head by mistake by some ball directed against the white cross in our flag, which would no doubt seem an insult to Mahomet in Arab eyes. They talked of scorpions, serpents, tarantulas, of clouds of grasshoppers and locusts, of spiders and toads of gigantic size that were found on the road and under the tents. They described in dismal colors the entrance of the embassy into Fez, in the midst of a hostile crowd, through tortuous, dark streets, encumbered with ruins and the carcases of animals; they prophesied a mountain of trouble for us during our stay at Fez—mortal languors, furious dysenteries and rheumatisms, musquitoes of monstrous size and ferocity compared with which those of our country were agreeable companions, and, finally, homesickness; apropos of which, they told us of a young Belgian painter who had gone to Fez with the embassy from Brussels, and who, after a week’s stay, was seized with such a desperate melancholy, that the ambassador was obliged to send him back to Tangiers by forced marches, that he might not see him die under his eyes; and it was true. But all this only increased our impatience to be off, and our delight can easily be imagined when Signor Soloman Affalo, the second dragoman of the Legation, one day presented himself at the door of the dining-room, and announced, in a sonorous voice—“The escort from Fez has arrived.”

With it came horses, mules, camels, grooms, tents, the route laid down for us by the Sultan, and his permission to start at once. Some days, however, had to be allowed for men and beasts to take a little rest.

The animals were sheltered at the Casba. The next day we went to see them. There were forty-five horses, including those of the escort, about twenty mules for the saddle, and more than fifty for baggage, to which were afterward added others hired at Tangiers; the horses small and light, like all Morocco horses, and the mules robust; the saddles and packs covered with scarlet cloth; the stirrups formed of a large plate of iron bent upward at the two sides, so as to support and enclose the whole foot, and serving also as spurs, as well as defences. The poor beasts were almost all lying down, exhausted more from hunger than from fatigue, a large part of their food having, according to custom, found its way, in the shape of coin, into the pockets of the drivers. Some of the soldiers of the escort were there, who came about us, and made us understand by signs and words that the journey had been a very fatiguing one, with much suffering from heat and thirst, but that, thanks to Allah, they had arrived safe and sound. They were blacks and mulattoes, wrapped in their white capotes, tall, powerful men, with bold features, sharp white teeth, and flashing eyes, that made us consider whether it would not be well to have a second escort placed between them and ourselves in case of necessity. Whilst my companions conversed in gestures, I sought among the mules one with a mild expression of generosity and gentleness in its eyes, and found it in a white mule with a crupper adorned with arabesques. To this creature I decided to confide my life and fortunes, and from that moment until our return the hope of Italian literature in Morocco was bound to her saddle.

From the Casba we proceeded to the Soc-de-Barra, where the principal tents had been placed. It was a great pleasure to us to see these canvas houses where we were to sleep for thirty nights in the midst of unknown solitudes, and see and hear so many strange things: one of us preparing his geographical maps, another his official report, another his book, a fourth his picture; forming altogether a small Italy in pilgrimage across the empire of the Schariffs. The tents were of a cylindrical conical form, some large enough to contain about twenty persons, all very high, and made of double canvas bordered with blue, and ornamented on the top with a large metal ball. Most of them belonged to the Sultan; and who knows how often the beauties of the seraglio had slept under them on their journeys from Fez to Meckinez and Morocco! In one corner of the encampment was a group of foot-soldiers of the escort, and in front of them a personage unknown, who was awaiting the arrival of the Minister. He was a man of about thirty-five, of a dignified appearance, a mulatto, and corpulent, with a great white turban, a blue capote, red drawers, and a sabre in a leathern sheath with a hilt of rhinoceros-horn. The Minister, arriving in a few moments, presented this gentleman to us as the commandant of the escort, a general of the imperial army, by name Hamed Ben Kasen Buhamei, who was to accompany us to and from Fez back to Tangiers, and whose head answered to the Sultan for the safety of ours. He shook hands with us with much grace and ease of manner, and his visage and air reassured me completely with regard to the eyes and teeth of the soldiers whom I had seen at the Casba. He was not handsome, but his countenance expressed mildness and intelligence. He must know how to read, write, and cipher—be, in fact, one of the most cultured generals in the army—since he had been chosen by the Minister of War for this delicate mission. The distribution of tents was now made in his presence. One was assigned to painting; among the largest, after that of the ambassador, was the one taken possession of by the commander of the frigate, the captain of the staff, the vice-consul, and myself, which afterward became the noisiest tent in the encampment. Another very large one was set aside as a dining-room; and then came those of the doctor, the interpreters, cooks, servants, and soldiers of the Legation. The commander of the escort and his soldiers had their tents apart. Other tents were to be added on the day of departure. In short, I foresaw that we should have a beautiful encampment, and already felt within me the beginnings of descriptive frenzy.

On the following day the chargÉ d’affaires went with the commander of the frigate and the captain to pay a visit to the representative of the imperial Government, Sidi-Bargas, who exercises what may be called the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs in Tangiers. I begged permission to accompany them, being very curious to see a Minister of Foreign Affairs who, if his salary has not been increased within the last twenty years (which is not probable), receives from his Government the sum of seventy-five francs, or fifteen dollars, a month, which includes the fund for the expenses of representation; a magnificent stipend, nevertheless, compared with that of the governors, who receive only fifty francs. And it is not to be said that their charge is a sinecure, and may be entrusted to the first comer. The famous Sultan Abd-er-Rahman, for instance, who reigned from 1822 to 1859, could find no man so well adapted for it as one Sidi-Mohammed el KhatÏb, merchant in coffee and sugar, who continued while he was Minister to traffic regularly between Tangiers and Gibraltar. The instructions which this Minister received from his Government, although very simple, are such as to embarrass the most subtle of European diplomatists. A French consul has set them down for us with much precision—viz., to respond to all demands of the consuls with promises; to defer to the very latest moment the fulfilment of these promises; to gain time; to raise difficulties of every kind against complaint; to act in such a way that the complainants will get tired, and desist; to yield, if threatened, as little as possible; if cannon are introduced, to yield, but not until the latest moment. But it must be acknowledged that after the war with Spain, and especially under the reign of Muley-el-Hassan, things have very much changed.

We went up to the Casba where the Minister lives; a line of soldiers kept guard before the door. We crossed a garden and entered a spacious hall, where the Minister and the Governor of Tangiers came to meet us. At the bottom of the hall was a recess or alcove, with a sofa and some chairs; in one corner, a modest bed; under the bed, a coffee-service; the walls white and bare; the floor covered with matting. We seated ourselves in the alcove.

The two personages before us formed an admirable contrast. One, Sidi-Bargas, the Minister, was a handsome old man, with a white beard and a clear complexion, eyes of extraordinary vivacity, and a large smiling mouth, displaying two rows of ivory-white teeth; a countenance which revealed the finesse and marvellous flexibility demanded of him by the very nature of his office. His eye-glasses and snuff-box, together with certain ceremonious airs of head and hands, gave him something of the look of a European diplomatist. Plainly a man accustomed to deal with Christians; superior, perhaps, to many of the prejudices and superstitions of his people; a Mussulman of large views; a Moor varnished with civilization. The other, the Caid Misfiui, seemed the incarnation of Morocco. He was about fifty years of age, with black beard and bronze complexion, muscular, sombre, and taciturn; a face that looked as if it had never smiled. He held his head down, his eyes fixed on the ground, his brow bent; his expression was one of strong repugnance. Both men wore large muslin turbans and long ample robes of transparent stuff.

The chargÉ d’affaires presented to these two personages, through the interpreter, the commandant of the frigate and the captain. They were two officials, and their introduction required no comment. But when I was presented, a few words of explanation as to the office I filled was necessary; and the chargÉ d’affaires expressed himself in rather hyperbolical terms. Sidi-Bargas stood a moment silent, and then said a few words to the interpreter, who translated—

“His Excellency demands why you have such ability with your hand. Your lordship wears it covered; your lordship will please remove your glove that the hand may be seen.”

The compliment was so new to me that I was at a loss for a reply.

“It is not necessary,” observed the chargÉ d’affaires, “because the faculty resides in his mind, and not in his hand.”

One would have thought this settled the question; but when a Moor gets hold of a metaphor, he does not leave it so easily.

“True,” replied his Excellency, through the interpreter; “but the hand being the instrument is also the symbol of the faculties of the mind.”

The discussion was prolonged for a few minutes. “It is a gift of Allah,” finally concluded Sidi-Bargas.

Loading The Camels.