Leaving the International Sanatorium of the Palmera at the hour that Allah willed it, which happened to be about eight in the morning of the 12th October, dressed in Moorish clothes, our faces far too white, and our ample robes like driven snow, the low thick scrub of Argan, dwarf rhododendrons, and thorny sandarac, and “suddra” [61a] bushes after five minutes’ riding swallowed us up, quite as effectually as might have done a forest of tall trees. Mohammed el Hosein, fully aware of the importance of getting accustomed to the Moorish clothes before at once emerging on the beaten track which leads from Mogador to Morocco city, engaged us in a labyrinth of cattle tracks, winding in and out for full two hours through stones and bushes, following the beds of water courses dry with the twelve months’ drought, which had caused almost a state of famine, and calling to us to hold ourselves more seemly, not to let our “selhams” [61b] hang too low, not to talk English, and when dismounted to walk as befits Arab gentlemen, to whom time is a drug.

After much threading through the tortuous paths, getting well torn and sunburned by the fierce sun, we emerged at the crossing of the river El Ghoreb, which runs into the sea at Mogador.

Here we encountered the usual stream of travellers always to be met with at the crossing of a river in countries like Morocco; grave men on mules going to do nothing gravely, as if the business of the world depended on their doing it with due precision. Long trains of mules laden with cotton goods going up to the capital; a travelling Arab family, the father on his horse, his gun cased in a red cloth case, balanced across the pommel of his saddle; his wife, either on foot or seated on a donkey following him, the children trotting behind, a ragged boy or two drawing a few brown goats, a scraggy camel packed with the household goods on one side, and on the other with a pannier from which a foal stuck out its head; and, lastly, two or three grown-up girls, who, as we came upon them crossing the stream, lift up their single garment and veil their mouths according to the laws of Arab decency. We sit and eat under a tree as far away as possible from all the passers-by, and our clean clothes and look of most intense respectability, secure us from all danger of intrusion on our privacy.

No sooner seated than Swani seized my legs and pulled them violently, and rubbed the knee-joints after the fashion of a shampooer in a Turkish bath. On my enquiry he assured me he knew I must be suffering agony from the short Moorish stirrups and cramped seat. I had indeed felt for the past half-hour as if upon the rack; but a horseman’s pride and acquaintanceship with many forms of saddles had kept me silent. The rubbing and pulling afforded intense relief, and I acknowledged what I had endured, on his assurance that no one escapes the pain, and that the most experienced riders in the land are sometimes kept awake all night, after a long day’s march, owing to the stiffness of their legs.In mediÆval Spain, good riders were often designated as “Ginete en ambas sillas,” [63] that is accustomed to either saddle, i.e. the Moorish and the Christian, and I now understood why chroniclers have taken the trouble to record the fact. Strangely enough the high-peaked and short-stirruped saddle does not cross the Nile, the Arabs of Arabia riding rather flat saddles with an ordinary length of leg. The Arab saddle of Morocco, in itself, is perhaps the worst that man has yet designed, but curiously enough from it was made the Mexican saddle, perhaps the most useful for all kinds of horses and of countries that the world has seen.

The Moors girth loosely and keep their saddle in its place by a broad breast plate; so that it becomes extremely difficult to mount, and to do so gracefully, you have to seize the cantle and the pommel at the same time, and get as gingerly into your seat as possible. Like all natural horsemen, the Moors mount in one motion, and bend their knees in mounting; thus, in their loose clothes, they appear to sink into the saddle without an effort. Once in the saddle a man of any pretension to respectability has his clothes arranged for him by a retainer, as being so voluminous, it is quite an art to make them sit.

Swathed in the various cloaks and wrappings which constitute the Arab dress, the feet driven well home into the stirrups, and gripping your horse’s sides with all the leg, the seat is firm, though most uncomfortable at first. After a little it becomes more tolerable, but few men can walk a step without enduring agony when they dismount after three or four hours on horseback, especially as it is a superstition amongst the Moors to mount and dismount as seldom as they can, for they imagine the act of getting on and off fatigues the horse far more than the mere carrying the burden on his back. Of course, both getting on and off are done in the name of God, that is after the repetition of the sacramental word Bismillah, used on eating, drinking, riding or performing any action for which a true believer should give thanks to Him who giveth benefits to man. It is the fashion amongst Europeans to sneer at Arab riding, and no doubt an Arab in the hunting field would not look well; and it is possible that a hunting man might also find himself embarrassed to ride a Moorish horse in Moorish saddle fast downhill over a country strewn with boulders, or at the “powder play,” to stand upon his saddle and perform the feats the Moors perform.

Horsemen and theologians are both intolerant. Believe my faith, and ride my horse after my fashion, for no Nonconformist, Cossack, Anglican, Gaucho, Roman Catholic, or Mexican can see the least redeeming point about his fellows’ creed, his saddle, horse, ox, ass, or any other thing belonging to him.

Lunch despatched, green tea drunk, and cigarette carefully smoked behind a bush, for men in our position must not give offence by “drinking the shameful” [64] in the face of true believers, we mount again, and plunge into an angle of the Argan forest, which extends from Mogador to Saffi.

Goats climb upon the trees, and camels here and there browse on the shoots; under the trees grow a few Aras (Callitris Quadrivalvis), and in the sandy soil some liliaceous plants gleam like stars in the expanse of heaven. After an hour the trees grow sparser and we emerge into a rolling country, and pass a granary, which marks the boundary between the provinces of Ha-Ha and Shiadma, and take our last look of the sea.

The Argan trees become more scarce as we cross into the fertile and well-cultivated province of Shiadma. Sand now gives place to rich red earth, and Swani, pricking his mule with his new dagger, which he had wheedled me to buy him under pretence that it did not befit my follower to go unarmed, comes up and asks if, even in England, there is a better cultivated land. I answer, diplomatically, that there is none, although perhaps the soil of England in certain parts is just as rich. Being an Arab he does not believe me for a moment, but ejaculates, with perfect manners, “God is Great, to him the praise for fertile lands, whether in England or Morocco.”

The Kaid’s house on a hill stands as the outward visible sign of law and order, and Mohammed el Hosein imparts the information that the prison is always full. ’Tis pleasant to go back, not in imagination, but reality, to the piping times when prisons were always full, [65] maidens sat spinning (I think) in bowers, and the gallows-tree was never long without its “knot.” This leads me to consider whether, if all the world were regulated by a duly elected county council, all chosen from a properly qualified and democratic, well-educated, pious electorate, and all men went about minding each other’s business—with fornication, covetousness, evil concupiscence, adultery, and murder quite unknown, and only slander and a little cheating left to give a zest to life—they would be happier upon the whole than are the unregenerate Moors, who lie and steal, fight, fornicate, and generally behave themselves as if blood circulated in their veins and not sour whey? Despite the Sultan’s tyranny, with every form of evil government thrown in, with murder rampant, vices that we call hideous (but which some practice on the sly) common to everyone, the faces of the poor heathen Moors, whom we bombard with missionaries, are never so degraded as the types which haunt the streets of manufacturing towns. And if the face is the best index to the mind, it may be that the degraded heathen Moor is at the heart not greatly worse than his baptised and educated rag-clad English brother in the Lord.

As evening falls we pass a shepherd close to the high road, sitting down to pray, beside him are his shoes and crook, and not far off his dog looks on half cynically, and up above, Allah preserves his attitude of “non mi ricordo,” which is excusable where men worry him five or six times a day. Still the shepherd must have been genuine, and could not have known that infidels would pass his way.

The country here is chiefly composed of red argillaceous earth, the rock limestone, and the general configuration round-topped hills rising towards the Atlas. The Argan trees become more rare, and within sight of our destination we see the last of them.

The Argan, like the Cacti of the Rio Gila, in Arizona, seems to be able to resist any drought. Strange that all-wise Providence failed to endow Africa with either the Cactus or the Aloe, both plants so eminently suited to its climate. It was, however, left to poor, weak, erring human reason to supply the want.

It is pleasing to reflect that for once the powers [66] generally opposed to one another should have united in endowing a country with two non-indigenous plants, which have taken to the soil as if they had been originally found there. Is it reason after all that is infallible?

Meskala reminded me curiously enough of an “hacienda” in Mexico, with an almost similar name Amascala, the same white walls, the same two towers of unequal height over the gateway, almost the same corrals for animals outside, formed in both cases of the branches of a prickly shrub, goats feeding by the same turbid stream flowing through a muddy channel, and the gate once opened, which in our case took at least a quarter of an hour’s entreaty mixed with objurgations, the self-same twisting passage of about twenty yards in length, through which the stranger enters before arriving at the great interior court.

The court, about two hundred feet across, was full of animals, belonging some to the Sheikh himself, and others to the various travellers who had sought shelter for the night within his walls.

We had a letter from the consul in Mogador setting forth that we are friends of his, but not descending to particulars, so that we were ushered into an airy upper room, and bread and butter, in a tolerably lordly dish, was set before us. We were uncertain whether Sheikh el Abbas penetrated my disguise, but if he did he made no sign; nor did it matter much, as I intended to be taken for a Christian travelling in Moorish dress to escape observation (as is often done), till near the place where we break off into the wilds, and leave the main road to Morocco city. Had all gone well, I hoped this would confuse the hypothetic persons, and jumble up their substance to such an Athanasian extent as to make recognition quite impossible.

Lutaif discourses much of eastern lands and reads el Faredi, an Arab poet, to the admiration of the assembled elders.

Swani makes tea and Sheikh el Abbas drinks the three cups prescribed by usage, lapping them like a dog, and drawing in his breath like a tired horse at water, to show his great content. The upper room looked out upon the court; and in the moonlight I saw a shepherd, assisted by a little ragged boy, engaged in separating the goats from amongst the sheep, and ranging them in two little flocks, after the fashion that the good are to be divided from amongst the wicked, when this foolish affair of life is finished with; though with this difference, that whereas in this case the two flocks were nearly equal, who can suppose but that after the last count, the goats will not exceed the sheep by at least ten to one. In a corral hard by the horses eat, some camel drivers crouch round a fire, and as I look at the unchanging Eastern life the call to prayers reminds me that Allah has blessed it by continuity for a thousand years.

The Sheikh sat long, talking of things and others, of the decline of British prestige, the advance of Russia, the new birth of Turkey, and of the glory of the Moorish kingdoms in the Andalos (Spain); and then of business, and how the Brus (Germans), a nation which he says seemed to have come into the world but recently, from some high mountains, are bidding fair to be the first of Franguestan. The German Emperor strikes him as being a great king. He is a Sultan, says the Sheikh, after the fashion that the Spaniards used to say when Ferdinand VII. had perpetrated some atrocity, “es mucho rey,” that is, he is indeed a king. [68]

I fancy that he knows I am a Nazarene, although my conversation is quite evangelical, that is, yea and nay, and now and then a pious sentence muttered very low to hide the accent. Lutaif and Swani answer for me, as if I were an idiot, and step in, so to speak, between me and the Sheikh, as when he asks, for instance, if I have seen the war ships of the Christians, when they at once respond I have, and give particulars invented at the moment, and I learn that ships steam more than fifty miles an hour, guns carry twenty miles, to all of which I nod a grave assent, and the Sheikh sips his tea and praises God for all his mighty works.

Lutaif tells of a vessel at Beirout, a Turkish war ship, sent by the German Emperor to the Sultan (he of Brus), so large that two young Syrians of his acquaintance, who had shipped as sailors and got separated, vainly sought each other for seven years, at night climbing to the masthead, by day descending to the hold, but all in vain, because the vessel was so huge; the Sultan could step aboard of her out of his palace on the Bosphorus and after walking all day land in whatever country he desired. This meets with great approval, and I have to confirm it to the letter, and do so with a nod.

The night is hot and the mosquito hums in his thousand; but the Sheikh as he goes warns us to bar the door, because, he says, “Sleep is Death’s brother,” meaning that when one sleeps death may be near and yet the sleeper be unconscious of it.

The muleteers retire to sleep beside their mules. Swani wraps up my feet in the hood of one “djellaba,” and draws another up to my head ready to cover it when I feel sleepy, and as we lie upon the floor, on sheepskins, watching the moon shine through the glassless window, Lutaif puts out the flickering wick, burning sustained by argan oil in a brass bowl, exclaiming, as he did so, “Oh, Allah! extinguish not thy blessing as I put out this light.” How much there is in names; fancy a deity, accustomed to be prayed to as Allah by Arabs, suddenly addressed by an Armenian as Es Stuatz, it would be almost pitiable enough to make him turn an Atheist upon himself. I feel convinced a rose by any other name would not smell sweet; and the word Allah is responsible for much of the reverence and the faith of those who worship him.

We left Meskala early and in rain, which soon was over, and entering on a little bit of desert country, the Atlas range appeared like a great wall of limestone capped with white in the far distance.

For three hot hours we passed through a miniature Sahara, rocky and desolate, stones, stones, and still more stones and sand, a colocynth or two lying amongst the rocks, some orange-headed thistles, Ziziphus Lotus here and there, some sandarac bushes now and then; the horses stumbling on the stones, mules groaning in the sand, and no great rock in all the thirsty land to shelter under from the sun. Three hours that seemed like six, until a line of green appears, a fringe of oleanders on the margin of a muddy stream in which swim tortoises, and by which we lie and lap like dogs, and understand wherefore the Psalmist so insisted on his green pastures wherein his Allah made him lie.

In England your green pastures have no significance, and call to mind but recollections of fat cattle and sheep with backs as square as boxes, in the lush grass between the hedges, as the express whirls past and the stertorous first-class passengers hold up their wine glasses against the light and praise the landscape as they eat their lunch. [70]But in Morocco and Arabia green grass means life, relief from thirst, and still to-day their poets stuff their verses full of allusions to the pastures rare to them, but which with us make one at times long for a bit of brown to break the sea of dull metallic green. Fig trees and olives, oleanders [71a] with pomegranates, and a few palms make an oasis in the little desert, and on a sheepskin spread on some cobble stones close by a rock, exactly like the one that Moses is depicted striking in old-fashioned Sunday books, the water rushing out in a clear stream, we lie and smoke and fall a-talking of our chances of reaching Tarudant.

Mohammed el Hosein gave it as his opinion that if he could conduct a Rumi [71b] there, he would make his name in Mogador as the best muleteer in all the south, and all his previous fears seemed to vanish as he descanted on the line of conduct to pursue when once inside. He seemed to think the risk, if known to be a Christian, was considerable, and counselled that we should encamp outside the gates and reach the town a little after dawn when people were arriving to sell provisions, and then go instantly to the Governor’s house which was close to the gates, and claim protection from him. Swani, who, as a native of Tangiers, though he had seen the world and twice performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, yet was a little uneasy in South Morocco, and thought it best that we should go to some caravansarai (called in Morocco fondak) and try our best to escape detection, I shamming ill, and Lutaif giving out he was a Syrian doctor.

Ali the muleteer, who learned for the first time our destination, was in an agony of fear, and said he must return at once; but when we pointed out to him that he would then not only lose his wages but perhaps his mule, he made his mind up, on condition I procured him a letter of protection from the English consul in Mogador. Mohammed el Hosein, before he left the town, had made me sign a paper stating I had engaged him for all his life, and, fortified with this protection, I understand he now bids all his governors and masters absolute defiance, wrapped, so to speak, within a tatter of the British flag. Lutaif, who knew the Governor of Tarudant, one Basha Hamou, who had been Governor of Mequinez—a negro, and a member of the famous Boukhari [72] Pretorian bodyguard—gave his opinion that Mohammed el Hosein was right, and that though Basha Hamou might not be pleased, he would be obliged to give us protection, and that he, probably after the first excitement of the natives had subsided, would send us back under escort to Mogador. I held my tongue, resolving that if we got there I would not return without a good look at the place.

About a mile from where we sat was situated the castle of the local Kaid, a castle set upon a rock, and strong enough apparently to set tribal artillery at defiance; but our Lord the Sultan being “unfavourable” to him, the castle was deserted, cattle stolen, crops all destroyed, and an air about the place reminding one of some of the Jesuit Missions (destroyed to show the Liberalism of Charles III.) which I have seen in Paraguay. In fact the Kaid is only Kaid in partibus, and it is understood a Sheikh in Fez has offered the Sultan 100,000 dollars to be made governor, providing he (the offerer) might have a “free hand” with the tribe; this means to oppress them, and in a year or two to take the 100,000 dollars out of them to pay the Sultan, and as much more for himself. Strange that the Arabs, though so warlike, should in all ages have endured so much oppression. It may be that the tribal system renders them specially liable to this, for inter-tribal jealousies make them an easy prey to any Sultan who can command money enough to set them at one another’s throats.

Ibn Jaldun (in the introduction to his history) says: “The Arabs are the least fitted men to rule other nations, for they demolish the civilisation of every land they conquer. They might be good rulers, but they must first change their nature.” This no doubt arises from their incapacity to govern themselves. Still with all their faults they are a fine race, and if they have demolished the civilisation of several countries, they have in return left their own type wherever they have conquered, and what type in the world is finer. I say nothing of the more doubtful of their legacies, their system of numeration, and the thoroughbred horse.

The grateful spring, fruit trees, and shady little oasis where we rested rejoice in the name of Aguaydirt el MÁ, a compound of Arabic and Shillah, MÁ in Arabic meaning the water, and Aguaydirt, no doubt having some meaning of its own in the wild tongue it comes from.

As we ride through a bushy country with some straggling farms, we pass a Sheikh on a good horse, long gun across the saddle, and a tail of ragged followers on foot. It seems he is a tax collector, gathering the taxes in person, and no doubt quite as effectually as the Receivers General used to do in France, including even him who sleeps (his bubble burst) under a flagstone in the door of San MoisÉ, [74] in Venice, with a brief dog-Latin epitaph, setting forth the usual lack of virtues of a man who fails.

Curious to observe (again per usual) the fatness and good clothes of the collector, and the mean estate of the poor “taxables,” their downcast looks, and all the apparent shifts and wiles they are putting forth to escape the worst outrage that a free man can bear, that is to have his money taken from him under the pretext of the public good.

Pleasant to gather taxes well armed on a good horse; a horse I mean that could do his ninety miles a day for several days and carry something heavy in the saddle bags.

I had a friend who, being for a short time governor of a province in a Central American Republic, and finding things became too hot for him, collected all the public money he could find, and silently one night abdicated in a canoe down to the coast, and taking ship came to Lutetia; and then, his money spent, lectured upon the fauna and the flora of the country he had robbed; and, touching on the people, always used to say that it was very sad their moral tone was low; the reflection seeming to reinstate himself in his own eyes, for he forgot apparently that in his abdication he but followed out the course which law had pointed out to him in his official days.

Night catches us close to el Mouerid, a dullish pile of sun-dried bricks, the lord of which, one Si Bel Arid, is an esprit fort, and knowing me for a Christian, ostentatiously walks up and down talking on things and others to show his strength of mind. Though disapproving of them, most Moors like to be seen with Christians, in the same way some pious men are fond of listening to wicked women’s talk, not that their conversation interests, but to show the asbestos quality of their own purity, and to set forth that, as in Rahab’s case no imputation can attach itself to men of virtuous life. Therefore, as maiden ladies are said to love the conversation of rakes, and clergymen, that of fallen women, so do Moors love to talk with and be seen in public with the enemies of God.

El Mouerid looks miserable in the storm of rain and wind, in which we leave it as the day is breaking. The Arab dress in windy weather teaches one what women undergo in petticoats upon a boisterous day; but still their pains are mitigated by the fact that generally men are near at hand to look at them, whereas we could not expect to find admiring ladies on the bleak limestone plain. Curious striations on the hills, as if the limestone “came to grass” in stripes, give an effect as of a building, to the rising foot-hills, into which we enter by the gorge of Bosargun, a rocky defile which gradually becomes a staircase like the road from Ronda to Gaucin, or that to heaven, almost untrodden of late years. We pass a clump of almond trees, by which a light chestnut [75] mare is feeding; she looks quite Japanese amongst the trees, buried up to the belly in aromatic shrubs; a little bird sits on her shoulder, no one is near her, though, no doubt, some sharp-eyed boy is hiding somewhere watching her, for in this district no animal is safe alone. From the top we get our first view of the Atlas in its entirety; snow, and more snow marking the highest peaks, the Glawi, Gurgourah, and the tall peaks behind Amsmiz. No mountain range I ever saw looks so steep and wall-like as the Atlas; but this wall-like configuration, though most effective for the whole range, yet robs the individual peaks of dignity.

To the east the stony plain of Morocco, cut into channels here and there by the diverted water of the Wad el N’fis (a river I was destined to follow to its very source), under the highest peaks of Ouichidan, upon the very confines of the Sus. Here, for the first time, we see, though far below us, the curious subterraneous aqueducts, looking like lines of tan pits, with which the plain of Morocco is intersected everywhere.

These aqueducts, called Mitfias, are a succession of deep pits, dug at varying distances from one another; the water runs from pit to pit in a mud channel, and the whole chain of pits often extends for miles. Men who undertake such herculean labour in order to irrigate their fields cannot well be called lazy, after the fashion of most travellers who speak, after a fortnight’s residence in Morocco, of the “lazy Moors.” The truth is that the country-people of Morocco are industrious enough, as almost every people who live by agriculture are bound to be. Only the Arabs of the desert, and the Gauchos of the southern plains, and people who live a pastoral life, can be called lazy, though they, too, at certain seasons of the year, work hard enough. The Arabs and Berbers of Morocco work hard, and would work harder had they not got the ever-present fear of their bad government before them. When one man quarrels with another, after exhausting all the usual curses on his opponent’s mother, sister, wife, and female generation generally, he usually concludes by saying: “May God, in his great mercy, send the Sultan to you”—for he knows that even Providence is not so merciless as our Liege Lord.

About three miles below us are two curious flat-topped hills, looking like castles. Mohammed el Hosein pronounces them to have been the site of two strong castles of the Christians. What Christians, then?—Roman, or Vandal, or Portuguese? Perhaps not Christian at all, but Carthaginian; for in Morocco, any old building, the builders of which are now forgotten, is set down to the all-constructing Christians, in the same manner as in Spain, the Moors built all the castles and the Roman bridges, and generally made everything which is a little older than the grandfather of the man with whom you speak. Not but at times the person questioned puts in practice, to your cost, the pawky Spanish saying: “Let him who asks be fed with lies.” What Christians could have been so foolish as to build two castles in a barren plain, far off from water, does not appear. At any rate, after a careful search, we can discover no trace of building, and put the castles down with the enchanted cities Fata Morgana, Flying Dutchman, and the like phenomena, which seem more real than the material cities, ships, and optical illusions, which, by their very realness, appear to lose their authenticity, and to become like life, a dream.

Passing the castles, we emerged again upon a desert tract, which took almost two hours to pass, and, at the furthest edge of it a zowia of a saint, Sidi Abd-el Mummen, with a mosque tower, flanked by palms, rising out of a sea of olives twisted and gnarled with age, and growing so thickly overhead that underneath them is like entering a southern church, out of the fierce glare of the sun.

History has not preserved the pious actions which caused Si Abd-el Mummen to be canonised. In fact, Mohammed, if he came to life again, would have a fine iconoclastic career throughout the world of the Believers; for though they have not quite erected idols, graven or otherwise, yet all their countries are stuck as full of saints’ tombs, zowias of descendants of saints, and adoration of the pious dead prevails as much as in the Greek or Latin churches. True, the custom has its uses, as it serves to indicate the distance on roads, and men as naturally enquire their way from Saint (Sidi) to Saint, as from church to church in Spain, or public-house to public-house in rural England. In other countries Saints, before becoming free of the fellowship, have to show their fitness for the post; but in Morocco no probation of any kind—that is, according to our ideas—seems to be necessary.

I knew an aged man, who used to sit before the Franciscan Convent, in the chief street of Tangier—a veritable saint, if saint exists. He sat there, dressed in a tall red fez, [78] given by some pious soldier, a long green caftan, clean white drawers, and a djellab of fine blue cloth. Long hair descended on both sides of his face in locks like bunches of chrysanthemums; his eyes were piercing, and yet wavering; for the poor Saint was nearer to Allah than the common herd by the want of some small tissue, fibre, or supply of blood to the vessels of the brain. Thus clothed and mentally accoutred for his trade, a basket by his side, and in his hand a long pole shod with iron, for he belonged to the sect called the Derkowi, he sat and told his beads, and took his alms, with an air of doing you a favour: for who gives to the poor does them no favour, but, on the contrary, insures his own eternal happiness, and but gives out again that which Allah entrusted to him for the behoof of man.

I happened one day, with European curiosity, to enquire what made the venerable man so venerated, and was told that, having suddenly gone mad, he killed his wife, threw off his clothes, and then marched naked through the land—justice not interfering—for the mad are wise; and then, the violence of his madness over, had quietly sat down and made himself a sort of “octroi” upon passers by, after the fashion of blind BartimÆus, who sat begging at the gate. The explanation pleased me, and in future when I passed I laid up treasure in that mothless territory, where no thieves annoy, by giving copper coins; and was rewarded even here on earth, for once I heard an Arab say: “This Kaffir, here” (speaking of me) “fears neither God nor devil, yet I have seen him give to the old Saint; it may be, God, the merciful, may save him yet, if but to show His might.”

And so it is that Saints’ tombs stud the land with oven-shaped buildings with a horse-shoe arch, a palm tree growing by, either a date or a chamcerops humilis, in which latter case pieces of rag are hung to every leaf-stalk, perhaps as an advertisement of the tree’s sanctity or from some other cause. The place serves as a re-union for pious folk, for women who pray for children, for gossipers, and generally holds a midway place betwixt a church and club. In order that the faithful wayfarers, even though idiots, shall not err, in mountain passes, as in the gorge of Bosargun, at four cross roads, passes of rivers, and sometimes in the midst of desert tracts the traveller finds a number of small cairns, in shape like bottles, which show—according to the way they point—where the next Saint’s tomb lies; for it is good that man should pray and think about himself, especially upon a journey—prayer acts upon the purse; alms save the soul; and Saints, though dead, need money to perpetuate their fame.

After nine hours of alternating wind and heat we reached Imintanout, the eastern entrance of the pass which, crossing a valley of the Atlas, leads to Sus. So to speak Tarudant is within hail, three (some say two) days and we are there, if . . . but the if was destined to be mortal, as it proved. The straggling village almost fills the gorge through which the road enters the hill. Above it towers the Atlas; a little stream (then dry) ran through the place, which had an air between a village in Savoy, and a Mexican mining town lost in the Sierra Madre. Brown houses built of mud, stretches of Tabieh [80a] walls, the tops of which crowned with dead prickly bushes, steely and bluish looking in the setting sun, the houses generally castellated, the gardens hedged in with aloes, wherein grow blackberries, palms and pomegranates, flowers, fig-trees, and olives. Water in little channels of cement, ran through the gardens, making of them an Arab paradise. Further up the gorge the Mellah (Jewry), in which we catch a glimpse for the first time of the Atlas Jews, servile and industrious, wonderfully European-looking as to type, superior to the Arabs and Berbers in business capacity, and thus at once their masters and their slaves.

The Kaid’s house, perched upon a rock, I avoided like a plague spot, fearing to be recognised and sent back to Mogador, and made, instead, for the house of one Haj Addee, a Sheikh, [80b] which being interpreted may stand in his case for country gentleman.The Sheikh has been in Mecca, Masar el Kahira (Cairo), carries a rosary, has some knowledge of the world (Mohammedan), and is not quite unlike those old world Hidalgos of La Mancha, they of the “Rocin flaco y galgo corredor,” whom Cervantes has immortalised in the person of Don Quixote.

Friends interested in my journey in Mogador had recommended the Sheikh to me as a safe man in whom to trust, before engaging myself in the recesses of the Atlas. So, riding to his house, I sent in Swani with a letter from an influential man in Mogador, and Haj Addee soon appeared, and, after asking me to dismount, led me by the hand to his guest house. This was an apartment composed of three small rooms, one serving as a bedroom, the second as a place in which to store our saddles, tent, and camping requisites, and the third, which had no roof, as sitting-room. All round the sitting-room ran a clay divan, a fire burned in one corner, and overhead the stars shone down upon us, especially the three last stars in the Great Bear’s tail, so that, take it for all in all, it was as pleasantly illuminated a drawing-room as any I have seen. Hard by the door stood an immense clay structure, shaped like a water barrel, which served for storing corn [81a] in during the winter, and in the spring broken to pieces when the corn was used.

Seated on the divan, I watched an enormous copper kettle try to boil upon a brass tripod [81b] in which a little charcoal glowed, whilst in a small brass dish a wick fed with raw mutton fat made darkness manifest. As I look round the room it strikes me that there seems to be a sort of dominant type of Mohammedan formed by religion, in the same way that in the north of Ireland you can distinguish a Catholic from a Protestant, across the street. Mohammed el Hosein, though of a different race, and from thousands of miles away, presents the perfect type of an Afridi, as depicted in the columns of the illustrated papers. Ali, our muleteer, with his thin legs, beard brushed into a fan, and coppery skin, might sit for the picture of a Pathan; it may be that an Oriental would discern a great resemblance between a Dutchman and a Portuguese which had lain dormant to our faculties, and if this was the case my theory would be as well confirmed as many other theories which have revolutionised the scientific world.

We talk of Mecca and Medina, of travelling from Jeddah, stretched in “shegedefs” [82] upon a camel’s back, of Gibel Arafat, the Caaba, and of the multitude of different classes of Mohammedans who swarm like bees, Hindoos and Bosnians, Georgians, Circassians, the dwellers in the Straits, and the Chinese believers, whom my host serves up all in a lump as Jawi, and says that they are little, yellow, all have one face, and that their mother in the beginning was a Djin. It appears that at the sacred places, the town of tents is of such vast dimensions that it is possible to lose yourself and wander for miles if you forget to take the bearings of your tent. It must be a curious sight to see the various nationalities, the greater part of whom have no means of communication other than a few pious sentences, and a verse or two from the Koran.

Swani, who is a double pilgrim, having twice been in Mecca, comes out most learnedly as to nice points in Mohammedan theology. Though he can neither read nor write, and is, I fear, not all too strict in the mere practice of his religion, yet he can talk for hours upon the attributes of God, and as judiciously as if he had been a graduate of St. Bees, so well he knows the essence, qualities, power, majesty, might, glory, and every proper adjective to be applied. The object of his hopes is to induce me to perform the pilgrimage. He assures me that it is quite feasible, has even arranged for my disguise, and tells me that in Mecca he can take me to a friend’s house, who is as big a Kaffir as myself. His idea is that I shall go as a Circassian, which people I resemble as to type, and when I say, “What, if I fall upon a real Circassian?” he only answers, “That is impossible,” in the same manner as when asked what they would do if they discovered me; he answers, “they would not discover you, you look so like a man from Fez.” What annoys him is that I make no apparent progress in the language, and I fear that I shall have to take a longer pilgrimage before I am fit, even with such a guide, to throw the stones on Gibel Arafat. Sometimes our talk ran on the wonders of the West; the steamships in which the pilgrims sail from Tangier to Jeddah, and on board of one of which, our host informs us, once when he was praying, the Kaffir Captain touched him on the arm, and, pointing to the compass, informed him he was not head on to the proper point. This conduct seems to have impressed Haj Addee, and he remarks, “God, in his mercy, may yet release that captain from the fire.” As we were talking, neighbours dropped in, in the familiar Eastern way, and sat quiet and self-contained, occasionally drinking from one of the two long-necked and porous water-jars, known as “Baradas,” or the “coolers,” which stand, their wooden stoppers tied to them with a palmetto cord, on each side the divan. Swani concocts the tea, using the aforesaid weighty copper kettle, a pewter cone-shaped tea-pot, made in Germany, a tin tea-caddy, painted the colour of orange marmalade, with crude blue flowers, which kind of merchandise Birmingham sends to Morocco, to be sold at one-and-sixpence, to show how much superior are our wares to those of all the world. The host knocks off great pieces from a loaf of cheap [84] French sugar with the key of the house, drawing it from his belt, and hammering lustily, as the key weighs about four ounces, and is eight or nine inches long.

Imintanout being, as it were, the gate of Sus, and the end of the first stage of our journey, we ask most anxiously as to the condition of the road. The way we learn is easy, so easy that trains of laden camels pass every day, and the whole distance across the mountains is a short two days. So far so good, but when we intimate our intention of starting early next morning, then bad news comes out.

It appears the tribe called Beni Sira, sons of burnt fathers, as our host refers to them, have stopped the pass, not that they are bad men, at least our host is sure of this, or lives too near them to venture on a criticism, but because they are dissatisfied with the new governor recently appointed, and wish to get him into bad odour with the Sultan by causing trouble. It appears those mis-begotten folk have fired upon a party only the day before, and wounded a Jewish merchant, who is laid up in a house not far from where we sit. A caravan of twenty mules was set upon last week, two men were wounded and the goods all carried off. A most ingenious system of proving that the governor is incompetent to preserve order, and therefore must be changed.

Suspecting that the story was untrue, and only got up to prevent my entering the Sus, I sent two messengers, one to see the Jewish merchant, and tell me if he is really wounded, and another to a Sheikh, asking if a traveller, going to pray in Tarudant, and skilled in medicine, can pass that way. The report of fighting seriously alarms our muleteers, and even Swani, though brave enough, looks grave at having to fight so far away from home. Haj Addee—to show goodwill, or to impress us with his power—offers, should the local Sheikh of the Beni Sira return an unfavourable reply, to get his men together and fight his way right through the pass. I thank him with effusion, but resolve not to place myself alone in the middle of a tribal battle without a rifle, on a half-tired horse, and deprived even of a Kodak with which to affright the nimble adversary.

And so I lose a day, or perhaps gain it, talking to the curious people, and prescribing wisely for ophthalmia; dividing Seidlitz powders into small portions to be taken at stated times to serve as aphrodisiacs, and watching an incantation which seems to cure our host of rheumatism.

Haj Addee was a sort of “Infeliz,” as the Spaniards call a man of his peculiar temperament. I am certain that in whatever business he entered into he must have failed, he had so honest a disposition, and his lies were so unwisely gone about, they would not have deceived a Christian child. His rosary, each bead as big as a large pea, was ever in his hand; he said it was made from the horn of that rare beast, the unicorn, and he had brought it with a price at Mecca, from a “Sherif so holy that he could not lie.” It looked to me like rhinoceros horn, and so, perhaps, the Sherif had lied less than he had intended when he sold the beads. In the middle of the string were four blue beads, and between these four beads a piece of ivory standing up like a cone, and called “el Madhna,” [86a] that is the “erect one.” Besides the “Madhna” there was a little comb, shaped like a stable mane comb, and made of horn, which dangled from the rosary, and which Moors use to comb their beards after performing their ablutions, and which they seldom carry in Morocco, except they have performed the pilgrimage.

Haj Addee suffered from rheumatism in the left shoulder. This he called simply “el burd,” “the cold,” and complained that he had exhausted all lawful medicine and was about to try an incantation. [86b] So to us entered a “fakir”—that is, a holy man—fat and white-bearded, and with the half-foolish, half-cunning look, so often to be found in “holy men” who are professors of some faith either inferior to, or differing from, our own. The man of God gave me a scowl, and, I fancy, saw I was a misbeliever, then sat down, after the fashion of his class, in the best seat, and, mumbling something, drew out a dagger and wrote upon it, with the juice of a plant he carried in his hand, some mystic characters. The master of the house, together with a friend, stood up and held two pieces of split cane about a yard in length. Both had the air the Italians call “compunto,” that is, they looked like people walking down the aisle of a crowded church (as if they trod on eggs) after partaking of the Holy Communion, and conscious that it is not impossible they may have eaten and drunk their own damnation, and that before a crowd of witnesses.

The Levite, sitting in a corner, kept on muttering, and underneath the cane rapidly passed the cabalistic dagger to and fro, just in the middle of the reeds, touching them lightly, as the dagger moved almost like a shuttle in his hands. The look of concentration and air of being accomplices after the fact was kept up for almost five minutes, and quite insensibly I find I joined in it, and, looking at Lutaif (a Christian, if such a man there be) at Swani and Mohammed el Hosein, I found that they too were fascinated, much like a rabbit in a snake-house moves towards the snake.

It seems, of all the forces which move mankind, humbug is the strongest, for humbugs are always taken in by humbug, and the very men who practice on the folly of mankind fall easy victims to the manoeuvres of their brothers in the art. Gradually the movement of the dagger grew slower, then stopped, and then the mystery man struck the patient gently with the blade upon the arm, broke the two canes across, tied them together in a bundle, and put them on a ledge just where the thatch is fastened to the mud walls of the house.

Admirable to observe the look of faith of all the standers-by. If ever I witnessed a religious action, that is, taking religio and superstitio (as I think the Romans did) to be synonymous, I did so then. Even the Salvation Army, at its most unreasonable, never succeeded in bringing such a look of ovine faith upon the faces of its legionaries. The patient says that he is greatly benefited, and for the first time in my life I see a religious ceremony begun, continued, and concluded (with the result successful), and without apparent sign of a collection being taken up.

Faith should not be divorced from its true spouse, the offertory. What man has brought together, even the act of God should not disjoin, for faith is so ethereal that, left alone, it pines and languishes in a hard world, unless sustained by pennies in a plate, in the same manner as the soul, which, as we all know (nowadays), is eternal, takes its departure when the body dies, and lies unquickened if the head receives a knock.

The function over, we sit and talk, look at one another’s arms, lie as to our shooting powers, and, after careful examination of my pistol, to my astonishment, our host produces a large-sized Smith and Wesson revolver, which it appears he bought in Kahira (Cairo), and seems to think the most important result of all his pilgrimage. Hours pass, and still no messenger, and a fat Saint [88] rolls in, and salutes Swani as an acquaintance of the pilgrimage. They kiss and embrace, hugging one another and alternately placing their beards over one another’s right and left shoulders. As Burton observes, the Arabs are by far the most emotional of the Oriental races. Poetry, or a well-told lamentable tale, moves them to tears, and friends who meet often weep for joy.

Swani privately imparts to me, in Pigeon Spanish, which he tells the Saint is Turkish, that the Saint is a humbug, and that when they last met he would hardly speak to him, for he (Swani) was working as a sailor on board an English pilgrim steamer, and dressed “a la inglesa, saber del trousers, catchy sea boots y todo.”

Still waiting for the messenger, I fall to observing the difference between the Arabs and the Berber race. It is the fashion amongst travellers in Morocco and Algeria to exalt the Berbers, and run down the Arabs. “The noble Shillah race” has become quite a catch-word with every one who sees a Berber and writes down his impressions. Curious that no one talks of the noble “Tuareg race,” yet the Tuareg’s are Berber of the Berbers, and their language, known as Tamashek, merely a dialect of the Berber language, which spreads over the vast area of territory from Tripoli to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Mediterranean to Timbuctoo. Undoubtedly the oldest known inhabitants of the countries which now are called the Barbary States, they seem to have kept their type and customs unchanged since first we hear of them in history. The Arabs found them in possession of all Morocco, and drove them into the mountains and the desert beyond, and though they forced Islam upon them, still the two peoples are anti-pathetic to one another, have blended little, and you can tell them from one another at a glance.

The Arab, one of the finest types of all the races of mankind, tall, thin, fine eyes, aquiline noses, spare frames; walking with dignity; a horseman, poet; treacherous and hospitable; a gentleman, and yet inquisitive; destroying, as Ibn Jaldun assures us, the civilisation of every land they conquer, and yet capable of great things, witness Granada and Damascus; a metaphysician and historian; sensual and yet abstemious; a people loveable, and yet not good to “lippen to,” as Scotchmen say; and yet perhaps of all the Orientals those who have most impressed themselves upon the world.

The Berbers, short, squat figures, high cheekbones, small eyes, square frames, great walkers, only becoming horsemen by necessity, as when the Arabs have forced them to the desert; as fond of mountains as the Arabs are of plains; in general agriculturists, whereas the Arab in his true sphere prefers a pastoral life; the Berbers, little known outside their mountains, look rather Scottish in appearance, that is, Scotch as ordinary mortals see that race, and not as seen through “kailyard” spectacles. It may be that the Berbers are a noble race, but personally I should apply the adjective “noble” to the Arabs, and to the Berbers give some such qualifying phrases as “relatively honest,” “tenacious,” or perhaps, best of all, “bourgeois,” which, to my way of thinking, best expresses the characteristics of those Berber tribes who, in the north side of the Atlas, are dominated by the Sultan’s power. Where they touch one another to the south upon the confines of the desert, it would be hard to give the palm for savagery; and the great Berber tribes, Ait Morghed and Ait [90a] Hannu, have become practically Arabs in their customs and their use of horses. The Tuaregs, [90b] on the other hand, have remained absolutely Berber, and indiscriminately attack Arabs and Christians, and all who cross their way.

As to the name of Berber, ethnologists, after the fashion of all scientists, have disagreed, taken one another by the beards, and freely interchanged (and I suppose as faithfully received) the opprobrious names which render the disputes of men of science and of theologians so amusing to those who stand aside and put their tongues out at both sorts of men.

Breber, Baraba, Berber, all three phases of the word are found. Some learned men derive the word from the Greek, and make it simply stand for Barbarian. Others, again, as stoutly make it Arab, and say it means “People of the Land of Ber.” [90c]Ibn Jaldun (always an innovator) has his theory, which seems just as good as any other man’s. He makes the Berbers to descend not from Shem, but Ham (Cam as the Arabs call him), and relates that Ham had a son called Ber, whose son was called Mazirg, and that from Ber came the Beranis, who, in time, and by corruption of the word, turned into Berberes. If not convincing, the theory shows invention, and smacks (to me) of the derivations I have heard hacked out, so to speak, with a scalping knife round the camp-fire; for, uncivilised and semi-civilised men waste as much time in seeking to find out how the form of words got crystallised as if they had diplomas from their universities.

Strangely enough, the people we call Berbers do not know the name, and call themselves Tamazirght, that is, the noble. Their language is called Amzirght, and resembles closely the Tamashek spoken by the Tuaregs, the dialect of the tribes of the Riff Mountains, and that of the Kabyles of Algeria. [91a] The Arabs neither use the word Tamazirght nor the word Berber, but call the Berber tribes “Shluoch,” that is, the outcasts; the verb is “Shallaha,” and the term used for the speech Shillah, [91b] a sort of Shibboleth in Europeans’ mouths, for very few even of those (who, like the Germans and the Spaniards can pronounce the guttural) ever attain to the pronunciation of the Arabic and Berber semi-guttural, semi-pectoral aspiration of this word.

Till the last twenty years the greater portion of the Berber tribes, although Mohammedans, owned but a nominal allegiance to the Sultan of Morocco, and lived almost independently under their Omzarghi (lords), Amacrani (great one), and Amrgari (elders), but nowadays, even in Sus and in the desert, the Sultan’s authority is much more felt. In fact, until quite lately they lived as their forefathers—the Getulians, Melano-getulians, and Numidians—lived before them, with the exception that being driven to the mountains they had greatly lost the horsemanship which made them famous to the ancient world. Even to-day it is not rare to see them ride, just as the Roman writers said the ancient Numidian cavalry rode, without a saddle or a bridle, and guiding their horses with a short stick, which they alternately change from hand to hand to make them turn.

The words Mazyes, MaziriciÆ and Mazyces occur in many Greek and Roman writers, and seem not impossibly to be derived from Amazirght, or from Mazig, the most ancient form known of their appellation. Leo Africanus, himself a Moor, [92] calls them Amarigh, and says of them “they are strong, terrible, and robust men, who fear neither cold nor snow; their dress is a tunic of wool over the bare flesh, and above the tunic they wear a mantle. Round their legs they have twisted thongs, and this serves them also for shoes. They never wear anything on the head at any season; they rear sheep, mules and asses, and their mountains have few woods. They are the greatest thieves, and traitors, and assassins in the world—” [93]

Even to-day this picture of them holds good in most particulars. The Berbers of the mountains seldom wear turbans or anything but a string tied round their foreheads. Generally they have a linen shirt to-day, but often wear the tunic as Leo Africanus says, and now and then one sees them with the twisted leg bandages like Pifferari. As to their moral character, after some small experience, I rather hold to the view of Leo Africanus, than that of Mr. Walter Harris. One thing is certain, that they cannot lie more than the Arabs do, but then the Arabs lie so prettily, with so much circumstance, and such nice choice of words, that it all comes to be a matter of individual taste, for there are those who had rather be deceived with civil manners by an Italian, than be cheated brutally by a North Briton, for the love of God.

The first of all the tribes we hear of in history as living in Morocco are the Autoloti of Ptolemy, who seem to be the Holots, who now live in El Gharb, that is, the country between Tangier and the Sebu. In Hanno’s Periplus, the same word occurs, and the description of their country seems to tally with the territory where they live.

Luis de Marmol, who was long prisoner with the Moors in the sixteenth century, places a people called Holots, near to Cape Azar. Now it is certain that the Holots are Berbers, and the testimony of the writers referred to goes to prove the long continuance of the Berbers in the land, and also seems to prove that in ancient times, as now, the Berbers were not nomads, as the Arabs were, but stationary, as they are to-day. Graberg di Hemso, in his curious “Speechio Geographico di Marocco,” says, “Questi Mazighi della Tingitana fabbricarono, ne quella costa in vincenanza del capo Bianco la citta di Mazighan, che porta ad oggi il loro nome di nazione.” He quotes no authority for his statement, and it is certainly at variance with fact, for Mazagan was founded by the Portuguese in 1506, and it is called Djedida, i.e., New Town, by the Arabs; still the name of Mazagan may yet commemorate an older town under the style of Mazighan.

Be all that as it may, the Berbers inhabited Morocco ages before the Arabs conquered the land, and gave them the religion of the sword. Tradition says they were once Christians, and certainly in their embroideries and decorations the cross is used. Yet, looking at the matter from an artistic point of view, discounting (for the nonce) morality, the cross, and honesty, it seems to me that noble is not a term to use in speaking of the Berber, and I submit it better fits a race such as the Arabs, who, in the persons of their horses and themselves, have done so much to refine the type of all those peoples, equine and biped, whom they have come across.

As night was falling, and a whistling wind springing up from the mountains, the messenger appeared bringing the news that the Sheikh refused to let anyone cross the pass, and that there had been a pretty hot exchange of shots that afternoon between the men of the Beni Sira, and a troop of cavalry crossing from Sus. This was a stopper over all, for it was evident we could not force our way through a road winding by precipices, held by a mountain tribe. Remembering the Arab proverb which runs, “Always ask counsel from your wife, but never act on what she says,” I held a long palaver with Haj Addee, Lutaif and my men, on what was best to do. Two courses were now open to me, either to wheel about and follow the shore road by Agadhir, or else to try the upper and more difficult pass to Sus, which starts above Amsmiz. This place was situated about two days’ journey further on, the pass, according to all reports, took three good days to cross, and having crossed it, we should still be a long day from Tarudant.

Lutaif had no opinion, and as the rest all counselled Agadhir, except Haj Swani, who gave it his opinion that he would go wherever I did, I “opted” for Amsmiz, arguing that to turn back would certainly dishearten my companions, and if the Howara had been fighting a week ago, they would be fighting still, and thinking that even if taking the upper road I failed, I should see more of the interior of the Atlas, than I was likely to do by any other route. After having cursed the Beni Sira thoroughly in all the languages we knew, drank gallons of green tea, sat for an hour or two listening to stories of the Djinoun, smoked cigarettes and Kiff, and generally tried to imagine we were not disappointed, we retired to bed, so as before first light to be upon the road. Our bedroom had no window, and gave on the al fresco drawing room I have referred to; all round the walls were little recesses in which to put things, made in the thickness of the wall, pouches and powder horns hung from goats’ horns forced underneath the thatch, three long “jezails,” all hooped with silver, one with a Spanish two-real piece, depending from the trigger-guard, stood in the corner, a lantern made of tin with coloured glass, gave a red light, upon the floor of mud a Rabat carpet in pattern like a kaleidoscope or Joseph’s coat, was spread; nothing of European manufacture was there except a large-sized (navy pattern) Smith and Wesson pistol, which, hanging by a red worsted cord upon the wall, seemed to project the shadow of the cross upon the room.