For more than an hour we travelled through fields of barley, from which showed here and there a black tent, the head of a camel, or a cloud of smoke. In the paths we traversed, scorpions, lizards, and snakes were numerous. Our saddles were so heated by the sun that we could scarcely hold our hands upon them. The light blinded our eyes, the dust choked us, and every thing around was still as death. The plain which stretched before us like an ocean seemed awful to me, as if the caravan were doomed to go on forever. But at the same time my curiosity to see the proud Beni-Hassan, of whom I had heard so much, kept up my drooping spirits. “What kind of people are they?” I asked of the interpreter. “Thieves and murderers,” answered he; “faces from the other world; the worst crew in Morocco.” And I scanned the horizon with anxiety.

The faces from another world were not long in coming. We saw in advance a great cloud of dust, and in a few minutes were surrounded by a throng of three hundred mounted savages, in green, yellow, white, violet, and scarlet, ragged, dishevelled, and panting, as if they had just come out of a fray. In the midst of the thick dust they raised, we could discern their governor, a long-haired, black-bearded giant, who, followed by two hoary vice-governors, all armed with muskets, approached the ambassador, pressed his hand, and then disappeared. Immediately the usual charging, firing, and yelling began. They seemed frantic. They fired between the legs of our mules, over our heads, and close to our shoulders. Seen from a distance they must have looked like a band of assassins assailing us. There were formidable old men, with long white beards, all skin and bone, but looking as if they might live for centuries; and young men with long locks of black hair flying like manes. Many had their chests, arms, and legs bare, turbans in tatters, and red rags twisted round the head; caics torn, saddles broken, bridles made of cord, old sabres and poniards of strange forms. And such faces! “It is absurd,” said the commandant, “to suppose that these people will be capable of the self-sacrifice of not killing us.” Every one of those faces told a story of blood. They looked at us, as they passed, out of the corner of their eyes, as if to hide the expression of their glance. One hundred came on the right, one hundred on the left, one hundred behind us, stretched out in open order. This guard on the flank was new to us; but we were not long in perceiving its necessity. As we advanced, the tents became more frequent in the open country, so that we finally passed through real villages surrounded by cactus and aloe hedges. From all these tents came Arabs running, dressed in a single garment or shirt, in groups, on foot, on horseback, on the cruppers of donkeys—two, and sometimes three on the same animal; women with children hung to their shoulders, old men supported by boys, all breathless, wild to see us, and perhaps not to see us only. Gradually a veritable people had gathered about us. Then the soldiers of the escort began to disperse them. They darted among them at a gallop, here and there and everywhere, yelling, striking, overturning beast and rider, and raising a tempest of cries and curses. But the scattered groups formed again, and continued to accompany us at a run. Through the smoke and powder, broken by the lightning of the shots, we saw over those vast fields, in the distance, tents, horses, camels, droves of cattle, groups of aloes, columns of smoke, crowds of people turned toward us, motionless, in an attitude of amazement. We had at last reached an inhabited land! It did exist then, and was not a fable, this blessed population of Morocco! After an hour’s rapid riding we were again in the solitude of the country, with no one save our escort, and soon came to our camp, which was pitched upon the bank of the SebÙ a thick chain of sentinels, on foot and armed with muskets, being extended all around the encampment. The country then was really dangerous! If I had been able to doubt it, I should have been more than persuaded by what I afterward heard.

The Beni-Hassi are the most turbulent, the most audacious, the most quarrelsome, and the most thievish tribe in all the valley of the SebÙ. Their last performance was a sanguinary revolt which broke out in the summer of 1873 (when the reigning Sultan came to the throne), which began with the sack of the governor’s house, and the carrying off of his women. Theft is their principal profession. They gather together in bands, armed and mounted, and make raids beyond the SebÙ, or in other neighboring lands, stealing all that they can drag or carry off, and killing, by way of precaution, all persons whom they encounter. They have their chiefs, their statutes, discipline, and rights recognized, in a certain sense, even by the government, which sometimes makes use of them to get back stolen property. They rob in the way of forced imposts. The people who are despoiled by them, instead of losing their time in seeking their property, protect what is left to them by paying a certain stipulated sum to the chief of the robbers. As for the boys especially, it is admitted as a most natural thing that they should all steal. If they get a ball in the back, or a skull fractured by a stone, so much the worse for them; no one will be robbed if he can help it; and there is no rose without its thorn. Their fathers say ingenuously—a boy of eight years old makes little, one of twelve much more, one of sixteen a great deal. Every thief has his own peculiar branch of the profession: there is the corn thief, the cattle thief, the horse thief, the merchandise thief, the thief of the duar (or Arab encampment), the street thief. In the streets they assault particularly the Jews, who are forbidden to carry arms. But the commonest kind of larceny is that at the expense of the duar. In this they are incomparable artists, not only among the Beni-Hassan, but all over Morocco. In stealing on horseback the great art consists in the lightning-like rapidity with which they act; they pass, seize, and disappear before any one can recognize them. They rob also on foot, and in a masterly manner. They creep into the duar naked, because dogs will not bark at a naked man; they soap themselves all over so as to be able to slip out of the hands of any one who might seize them; and carry a branch in their arms, so that horses, taking them for bushes, may not be frightened. Horses are the most coveted prey. They seize them round the neck, stretch their legs under the belly, and away like an arrow. Their audacity is incredible. There is no encampment of a caravan, be it that of a pasha or ambassador, where they will not penetrate in spite of the strictest watch. They glide upon the ground like snakes, covered with grass, with straw, with leaves, dressed in sheepskin, disguised as beggars, as madmen, as saints, as soldiers. They will risk their lives for a chicken, and go ten miles for a dollar. They will even steal a bag of money from under the head of a sleeping man. And that very night, in spite of the chain of sentinels, they stole a sheep that was tied to the cook’s bed, who, when he discovered his loss the next morning, stood half an hour motionless, with folded arms, before the door of his tent, his eyes fixed upon the horizon, exclaiming ever and anon: “Ah! holy Madonna! what a country!—what a country!—what a country!”

I have spoken of the duar: Morocco cannot be understood without a description of them, and with what I saw, and what Signor Morteo, who has lived twenty years among them, told me, I can venture to describe them.

The duar is in general made up of ten, fifteen, or twenty families, who are related to each other, and each family has a tent. The tents are disposed in two parallel rows, distant from each other about thirty paces, forming thus a sort of square open at both ends. The tents are almost all of equal size, and consist of one great piece of black or chocolate-brown stuff, woven of the fibre of the dwarf palm, and of camels’ and goats’ hair which is sustained by two poles or thick canes upholding a cross-piece of wood. Their shape is still that of the habitations of Jugurtha’s Numidians, which Sallust compares to a boat with its keel in the air. In the winter and autumn the cloth is stretched to the ground and securely fastened by cords and pegs, so that wind and water cannot enter. In summer, a large aperture is left all round for the circulation of air, protected by a little hedge of reeds, canes, and dried brambles. By these means the tents are cooler in summer, and better closed against the rain and wind than even the Moorish houses in the cities, which have neither doors nor windows. The greatest height of a tent is two metres and a half, the greatest length ten metres; those that exceed these measurements belong to some opulent sheik, and are rare. A reed partition divides the tent into two parts, in one of which the father and mother sleep, while the other is occupied by the children and the rest of the family.

One or two straw mats; a gaily painted and arabesqued wooden chest for clothes; a little round mirror from Trieste or Venice; a high tripod made of cane, which is covered with a caic, under which they wash themselves; two large stones for grinding grain; a weavers loom, such as was in use in Abraham’s time; a rusty tin lamp, a few earthen jars, a goat-skin or two, a plate or two, a distaff, a saddle, a musket, a poniard, comprise the furniture of such a tent. In a corner there is generally a hen with her brood of chickens; in front of the tent door, an oven composed of two bricks; on one side a little kitchen garden beyond, two or three round pits lined with stones and cement, in which they keep their corn.

In almost all the great duars there is a tent appropriated to the school-master, who receives from the community five francs a month and his food. All the little boys are sent to him to recite a hundred thousand times the same verses from the Koran, and to write them, when they know them by heart, upon a wooden tablet. The greater part of them leave school before they know how to read, to go and work for their parents, forgetting in a short time the little they have learned. The few who have the will and power to study, continue until twenty years of age, after which they go to some city to complete their studies, and become taleb, which signifies notary or scrivener, and is equivalent to being a priest, because among the Mahometans the civil and religious law is identical. Life in the duar is of the utmost simplicity. Everybody rises at dawn; they say their prayers, feed the cows, make the butter, and drink the buttermilk that remains. For drinking vessels they make use of shells and patelle which they buy from the people of the coast. Then the men go to labor in the fields and do not return until evening. The women fetch wood and water, grind the corn, weave the coarse stuffs of their own and their husbands’ dress, twist cords for the tents out of the fibre of the dwarf palm, send food to their husbands, and prepare the cÙscÙssÙ for the evening meal. The cÙscÙssÙ is a mixture of beans, squash, onions, and other green stuff; sometimes it is sweetened, peppered, and flavored with the juice of meat; on feast days it is eaten with meat. When the men come home there is supper, and in general bed at sundown. Sometimes after supper an old man will tell a story in the midst of a circle of listeners. During the night the duar remains immersed in silence and darkness; here and there a family will keep a small lamp burning before the tent to serve as a guide to wandering travelers. The dress of the men and women consists of a cotton shirt, a mantle, and a coarse caic. The mantles and caics are only washed two or three times a year, on the occasion of solemn festivals, and in consequence they are generally of the same color as the wearer’s skin and often blacker. The cleanliness of the body is better cared for, since without the ablutions prescribed by the Koran, no one can pray. The women for the most part wash all over every morning, hiding themselves under the tripod covered by a caic. But working as they do, and sleeping as they sleep, they are always dirty more or less, even although, for a wonder, they make use of soap. In their leisure hours many play at cards, and when not playing, one great amusement of the men is to lie on the ground and play with their children; for whom, however, they care less when they get older. Many of these children of the duar arrive at the age of ten or fourteen years without ever having seen a house, and it is curious to hear an account of their behavior when taken into the service of Moors or Europeans in the cities; how they feel the walls, stamp on the floors, and with what intense emotion they look out of a window, or run down a staircase. The principal event in these wandering villages is a marriage. The parents and friends of the bride, with a great noise of firing of muskets and shouting, bring her seated on a camel to the husband’s duar. She is wrapped in a white or blue mantle, perfumed, with her nails tinted with henna and her eyebrows blackened with burnt cork, and is generally fattened for the occasion by the use of an herb called ebba, much in vogue among young girls. The husband’s duar meantime has invited the neighboring duars to the festival, and from a hundred to two hundred men, mounted and armed, respond to the invitation. The bride dismounts from her camel before the door of her husband’s tent, and seated on a seat decorated with flowers and fringes, looks on at the festival; whilst the men go through the powder play, the women and girls, disposed in a circle before her, dance to the music of a fife and drum, around a cloth spread upon the ground, into which every guest in passing throws a coin for the newly married pair, and a sort of crier announces the amount of the offering in a loud voice, with good wishes for the donor. Toward evening, the dancing and firing over, every one sits down on the ground, and great dishes of cÛscÛssÙ, roast chickens, sheep on the spit, tea, sweetmeats, and fruits are carried round; the supper being prolonged up to midnight. The next day, the bride, dressed in white, with a red scarf bound over her mouth and a hood upon her head, goes, accompanied by her friends and relations, to the neighboring duars to collect more money. This done, the husband goes back to his labor, the wife to hers, and love takes to flight. When any one dies, the dances are repeated. The relations nearest to the defunct record his virtues; the rest, crowd about him, dance with gestures and attitudes of grief, cover themselves with dust, tear their hair, and scratch their faces. After which they wash the corpse, wrap it in a piece of new cloth, carry it on a bier to the cemetery, and bury it, lying on the right side, with its face turned to the east. These are their customs and usages, as one may say, patent to all the world; but who knows their more private doings? Who can follow the clue by which life in a duar is ordered? Who can say how first love speaks, how slander is disseminated, in what strange forms, by what strange accidents, adultery, jealousy, envy are produced; what virtues shine, what sacrifices are consummated, what abominable and perverted passions are rife under the shadow of those tents? Who can trace the origin of their monstrous superstitions? Who can clear up the odd mingling of Pagan and Christian traditions in their religious rites; the sign of the cross made on the skin, the vague belief in satyrs where forked elm trees are found, the image carried in triumph at the budding of the grain, the name of Mary invoked for the help of women in childbirth, the circular dances resembling those of the worshippers of the sun? One thing only is certain and manifest: their poverty. They live on the scant produce of ill-cultivated ground, borne down by heavy and often changing taxes, collected by the sheik or head of the duar, elected by themselves, but directly under the orders of the governor of the province. They pay the governor, in money or produce, the tenth part of the harvest, and one franc a head for cattle. One hundred francs a year is paid for every tract of land corresponding to the labor of a yoke of oxen. The Sultan, at the principal festivals of the year, exacts a “present” equivalent to five francs per tent. They pay money or furnish provisions at the order of the governors whenever the Sultan, or a pasha, or an ambassador, or a body of soldiers passes by.

Besides this, any one who has money is exposed to the extortions of the governor, veiled or excused by no pretext whatever, but practised with insolence and violence. To be esteemed rich is a misfortune. Whoever has a small sum laid by, buries it, spends in secret, feigns poverty and hunger. No one accepts a blackened coin in payment, even when he knows it to be good, because it may look as if it had been buried in the ground, and cause the suspicion of hidden treasure. When a rich man dies, the heirs, in order to avoid ruin, offer a present to the governor. Presents are offered to secure justice, to prevent persecution, to avoid being reduced to die of hunger. And when at last hunger has them by the throat and despair blinds them, they strike their tents, seize their muskets, and raise the signal of revolt. What happens then? The Sultan unchains three thousand mounted fiends and sows death throughout the rebellious district. His soldiers cut off heads, lift cattle, carry off women, burn grain fields, reduce the land to a desert and strew it with ashes slaked in blood, and then return to announce the extinction of the rebellion. If the rebellion extends, and the armies and arts of the government are vain, what advantage do the rebels gain beyond a few short days of warlike liberty, bought by thousands of lives? They can elect another Sultan, and provoke a dynastic war between province and province, behind which lurks a worse despotism than before; and so it goes on from century to century.

On the morning of the tenth the caravan resumed its march, escorted by the three hundred of Beni-Hassan and their chief Abd-Allah—servant of God.

All that morning we travelled over a plain covered with fields of barley, wheat, and buck-wheat, interspersed with large tracts of wild fennel and flowers, and dotted with groups of trees and black tents, which last resembled in the distance those heaps of charcoal that are seen on the Tuscan maremma. We met more cattle, horses, camels, and Arabs than on the preceding days. Far away in front extended a mountain chain of a most delicate gray tint, and in the middle distance glimmered two white cube—the first illuminated by the sun, the second hardly visible. They were the tombs of the saints Sidi-Ghedar and Sidi-Hassem, between which lie the confines of the land of Beni-Hassan. Our camp was to be pitched near the latter.

Some time, however, before arriving at that point, Governor Sidi-Abd-Allah, who from the moment of our departure had seemed anxious and thoughtful, drew near to the ambassador, and signified his wish to speak. Mohammed Ducali came up quickly. “The ambassador from Italy will pardon me,” said the haughty chief, “if I venture to ask permission to turn back with my men.”

The ambassador demanded why.

“Because,” answered Sidi-Abd-Allah, contracting his black brows, “my own house is not secure.”

Is that all? thought we. Only two miles away too! What an agreeable existence must be that of a governor of Beni-Hassan!

The ambassador consented; the chief took his hand, and pressed it to his breast with an energetic expression of gratitude. This done, he turned his horse, and in a few minutes the many-colored, ragged, and terrible crew was nothing but a cloud of dust upon the horizon.