The next morning, at sunrise, we forded the river Kus, on the right bank of which the city of Alkazar is situated, and again advanced over an undulating, flowery, solitary country, whose confines stretched beyond our sight. The escort was scattered in a number of detached groups, looking like so many little cortÉges of a Sultan. The artists galloped here and there, sketch-book in hand, sketching horses and riders. The rest of the members of the embassy talked of the invasion of the Goths, of commerce, of scorpions, of philosophy, eagerly listened to by the mounted servants who came behind. Civo lent particular attention to a philosophic discussion; Hamed listened to his master, who was telling about a wild-boar hunt, in which he had risked his life. This Hamed was, after Selim, the most notable personage in the whole category of servants, soldiers, and grooms. He was an Arab of about thirty years old, very tall, bronzed, muscular, strong as a bull; but he had also a beardless face, the softest dark eyes, a voice, a smile, a grace in all his movements, which made the most marked contrast with his powerful person. He wore a white turban, a blue jacket, and Zouave trousers; spoke Spanish, knew how to do every thing, and pleased everybody, so that the vain-glorious Selim was jealous of him. The others also were all more or less handsome young fellows, attentive, and full of obsequious solicitude. When one of us looked back, he encountered their big eyes asking whether he needed any thing. “What a pity,” thought I, “that we should not be attacked by a band of robbers, so that we might see all these nimble fellows put to the proof!”
We had ridden about two hours when we began to meet people. The first was a black horseman, who held in his hand one of those little sticks with an inscription in Arabic, called herrez, which the monks give to travellers to preserve them from robbers and illness. Then came some ragged old women bearing great bundles of wood upon their shoulders. Oh, power of fanaticism! Bent as they were, tired, breathless, they still found strength to launch a curse at us. One murmured, “God curse these infidels!” Another, “God keep us from the evil spirit!” About an hour later we met a courier, a poor lean Arab, bearing letters in a leathern bag slung about his neck. He stopped to say that he came from Fez, and was going to Tangiers. The ambassador gave him a letter for Tangiers, and he hastened on his way.
Such, and no other, is the postal service of Morocco, and nothing can be more wretched than the lives of these couriers. They eat nothing on their journey but a little bread and a few figs; they stop only at night for a few hours to sleep, with a cord tied to the foot, to which they set fire before going to sleep, and which wakens them within a certain time; they travel whole days without seeing a tree or a drop of water; they cross forests infested with wild boar, climb mountains inaccessible to mules, swim rivers, sometimes walk, sometimes run, sometimes roll down declivities, or climb ascents on feet and hands, under the August sun, under the drenching autumn rains, under the burning desert wind, taking four days from Tangiers to Fez, a week from Tangiers to Morocco, from one extremity of the empire to the other, alone, barefooted, half-naked; and when they have reached their journey’s end, they go back! And this they do for a few francs.
At about half-way from Alkazar to our destination the road began to ascend very gradually until we reached a height from whence we saw another immense plain covered with vast tracts of yellow, red, and white flowers, looking like stretches of snow, striped with gold and crimson. Over this plain there came galloping to meet us some two hundred horsemen, with muskets resting on their saddle, led by a figure all in white, which Mohammed Ducali recognized and announced in a loud voice to be the governor of Ben-Auda.
We had reached the confines of the province of Seffian, called also Ben-Auda, from the family name of the governor, which signifies son of a mare; a name which had taken my fancy before leaving Tangiers.
We descended into the plain, and the two hundred of Seffian having drawn up in a line with the three hundred of Laracce, the governor Ben-Auda presented himself to our chief.
If I live to be a hundred years old I shall never forget that countenance. He was a lean old man, with savage eyes, a forked nose,[1] a lipless mouth cut in the form of a semicircle turned downward. Arrogance, superstition, Venus, kif, idleness, and satiety were written upon his visage. A big turban covered his forehead and ears. A curved dagger hung from his girdle.
The ambassador dismissed the commander of the escort from Laracce, who at once withdrew with his horsemen at a gallop; and we went on with the new escort, and the usual accompaniment of charging and firing.
Their faces were blacker, their robes more gaudy, their horses finer, their yells more extraordinary, their charges and manoeuvres more wildly impetuous than any we had yet seen. The further we advanced, the more apparent became the local color of all things.
In all that multitude twelve horsemen, dressed with unusual elegance and mounted on beautiful horses, were conspicuous, even in the eyes of the Arabs. Five of them were colossal young men, who appeared to be brothers; all had pale bronzed faces and great black brilliant eyes under enormous turbans, These five were the sons, and the other seven, nephews of the governor Ben-Auda.
The firing and charging went on for about an hour, at which time we reached a garden belonging to the governor, where we dismounted to rest and refresh ourselves.
It was a grove of orange and lemon trees, planted in parallel rows, and so thickly as to form an intricate green roof, under which one enjoyed the coolness, shade, and perfume of paradise.
The governor dismounted with us, and presented his sons,—five as handsome, dignified, and amiable faces as are often to be seen. One after the other pressed our hands, with a slight bow, casting down his eyes with an air of boyish shyness.
We were all presently seated in the garden, upon a beautiful carpet from Rabat, where we were served with breakfast. The governor of Ben-Auda sat upon a mat at twenty paces from us, and also breakfasted, waited upon by his slaves. Then ensued a curious exchange of courtesies between him and the ambassador. First, Ben-Auda sent a vase of milk as an offering: the ambassador returned it with a beefsteak. The milk was followed by butter, the beefsteak by an omelet; the butter by a sweet dish, the omelet by a box of sardines; the whole accompanied by a thousand coldly ceremonious gestures—hands clasped upon the breast, and eyes turned up to heaven with a comical expression of gastronomic enthusiasm. The sweet dish, by the way, was a species of tart made of honey, eggs, butter, and sugar, of which the Arabs are extremely fond, and about which they have an odd superstition—that if while the woman is cooking it a man should happen to enter the room, the tart goes wrong, and even if it could be eaten it would not be prudent to do so. “And wine?” some one asked; “should we not offer him some wine?” There was some discussion. It was asserted that governor Ben-Auda was in secret devoted to the bottle; but how could he drink in the presence of his soldiers? It was decided not to send any. To me, however, it seemed that he cast very soft glances at the bottles, much softer than those with which he favored us. During the whole time that he sat there on his mat, except when he was giving thanks for gifts, he maintained a frowning expression of pride and anger that made me wish to have under my orders our forty companies of bersaglieri,[2] that I might parade them under his nose.
Mohammed Ducali meantime was relating to me a notable episode in the history of Ben-Auda, in which family the government of Seffian has been for ages. The people of this province are brave and turbulent; and they are said to have given proof of their valor in the late war with Spain, when, at the battle of Vad-Ras, in March, 1861, Sidi Absalam Ben-Abd-el-Krim Ben-Auda, then governor of the whole province of Garb, was killed. To this Absalam succeeded his eldest son, Sidi Abd-el-Krim. He was a violent and dissipated man, who despoiled his people by taxation and tormented them with a capricious ferocity. One day he intimated to one Gileli Ruqui that he desired a large sum of money. The man excused himself on the plea of poverty. He was loaded with chains and cast into prison, The family and friends of the prisoner sold all they had and brought the desired sum to Sidi Abd-el-Krim. Gileli came out of prison, and having assembled all his friends, they took a solemn oath to kill the governor. His house was situated at about two hours’ ride from the garden where we were. The conspirators attacked it in the night in force. They killed the sentinels, broke into the hall, strangled and poniarded Sidi Abd-el-Krim, his wives, children, servants, and slaves; sacked and burned the house, and then threw themselves into the open country, raising the cry of revolt. The relatives and partisans of Ben-Auda gathered themselves together and marched against the rebels; the rebels dispersed them, and rebellion broke out all over the Garb. Then the Sultan sent an army; the revolt, after a furious resistance, was put down, and the heads of the leaders hung from the gates of Fez and Morocco; the land of the Benimalek was divided from the province; the house of Ben-Auda was rebuilt; and Sidi-Mohammed Ben-Auda, brother of the murdered man, and guest of the Italian embassy, assumed the government of the land of his fathers. It was a passing victory of desperation over tyranny, followed by a harder tyranny than before; in these words may be summed up the history of every province of the empire, and, perhaps, at that very moment there was a predestined Gileli Ruqui for Sidi-Mohammed Ben-Auda.
Before sunset we reached our encampment, which was not very far off, on a solitary plain, at the foot of a small eminence on which was a Cuba flanked by a palm tree.
The ambassador had hardly arrived, when the mona was brought and deposited as usual before his tent, in the presence of the intendant, the caid, the soldiers, and servants. Whilst they were busy making the division, I saw, as I raised my eyes toward the Cuba, a man of tall stature and strange aspect coming down with long strides toward the encampment. There was no doubt about it: here was the hermit, the saint, coming to make a disturbance. I said not a word, but waited. He skirted the camp on the outside so as to appear suddenly before the ambassador’s tent. He moved on the tips of his toes; a sepulchral figure, covered with black rags, disgusting to behold. All at once he broke into a run, dashed into the midst of us; and, recognizing our chief by his dress, rushed upon him with the howl of one possessed. But he had scarcely time to howl. With lightning rapidity the caid seized him by the throat, and dragged him furiously into the midst of the soldiery, who in a second had him out of the camp, stifling his roars with a mantle. The interpreter translated his invectives as follows: “Let us exterminate all these accursed Christian dogs, who go to the Sultan and do what they please, while we are dying with hunger!”
A little after the presentation of the customary mona, there arrived at the camp about fifty Arabs and blacks, bearing in single file great round boxes, with high conical covers of straw, and containing eggs, chickens, tarts, sweets, roast meats, cÙscÙssÙ, salads, etc., enough to satisfy an entire tribe. It was a second mona, spontaneously offered to the ambassador by Sidi-Mohammed Ben-Auda, perhaps to do away with the effect of his threatening visage in the morning.
That personage himself presently appeared on horseback, accompanied by his five sons and a crowd of servants. The ambassador received them in his tent, and conversed with them through the interpreters. He asked one of his sons if he had ever heard of Italy. The young man answered that he had heard it mentioned several times. One of them asked whether England or Italy was farthest from Morocco; how many cannons we had, what was the name of our chief city, and how the king was dressed. As they spoke, they all examined curiously our neckties and our watch-chains. The ambassador then asked the governor some questions about the extent and population of his province. Either he knew nothing, or did not choose to tell; any how, it was not possible to get any information out of him. I remember he said that the exact number of the population could not be known. “But about what number?” was asked. Not even about the number could be known. Then he questioned us again. “How did we like the city of Alkazar? Should we like to stay in Morocco? Why had we not brought our wives?” They drank tea with us, and after many salutations and genuflexions, remounted their horses, and spurred away, or rather disappeared; for as there was not a village or a house within eyeshot, all those who came and went made the effect of people who had risen out of the ground, or vanished into thin air.
This, like every other day, closed with a splendid sunset, and a noisy, merry dinner. But the night was one of the most disturbed that we had had throughout the journey; perhaps because it was necessary in the land of Seffian that the ambassador should be more carefully guarded than in other places, the night sentinels kept each other awake by singing, every quarter of an hour, a verse from the Koran. One intoned the words, and all the others responded in chorus, in loud voices, accompanied by the neighing of steeds and the barking of dogs. We had hardly dropped asleep when we were aroused again, and could not succeed in closing an eye. By way of addition, a little after midnight, in one of the intervals of silence, a wild, harsh voice arose out in the fields, and never ceased until dawn. Sometimes it approached, then seemed to recede, then approached again very near, taking a tone of menace, or lamenting, despairing, and bursting out now and then in piercing cries or yells of laughter that chilled one’s bones. It was the saint wandering about the confines of the camp, and calling down God’s malediction on our heads. In the morning when we issued forth from our tents, there he was erect, like a spectre in front of his solitary Cuba, bathed in the first rose tints of dawn, and pouring out curses in a harsh voice, waving his skeleton arms above his head.
I went in search of the cook to see what he thought of this awful personage. But I found him so busy making coffee for an impatient crowd who were all attacking him at once, that I had not the heart to torment him. Some were talking Arabic, Ranni spoke Sicilian, the Calefato Neapolitan, Hamed Spanish, and M. Vincent French.
“Ma, I can’t understand a word you say, gallows-birds that you are!” screamed the cook in despair.
“Ma, this is Babylon! Let me breathe! Do you want to see me die? Oh che pais, mi povr’om! Oh, what a country for a poor man to be in! They all talk together, and no one understands the other!”
When he had recovered his breath a little, I pointed out the howling saint, and asked him, “Well, what do you think of that piece of impudence?”
He raised his eyes to the Cuba, looked steadily at the saint for a few moments, and then with a gesture of profound contempt answered in Piedmontese accent, “Guardo e passi!”[3] and withdrew with dignity into his tent.
