My journey all next day lay through low hills of reddish argillaceous earth, cut into gullies here and there by the winter rains, and clothed with sandaracs, Suddra (Zizyphus lotus) and a few mimosas. The hills sloped upwards to the wall-like Atlas, and on the left the desert-looking plain of Morocco, broken but by the flat-topped hill known as the Camel’s Neck (Hank el Gimel), and bounded by the mountains above Demnat, and the curve the Atlas range makes to the north-east so as to almost circle round Morocco city. We search our hearts, that is, I search my own and the others’ hearts and try to persuade myself that we have acted prudently in not attempting the Imintanout road. But when did prudence console anybody? Rashness at times may do so, but the prudent generally (I think) are more or less ashamed of the virtue they profess. The Moors, of course, were glad we had risked nothing, for though no cowards when the danger actually presents itself, indeed, in many cases (as at the battles with the Spaniards in 1861) showing more desperate courage than anyone except the Soudanese, still they are so imaginative, or what you please, that if men talk of danger they will take a five days’ journey to avoid the places where hypothetic peril lurks. Mohammed el Hosein, being in his character of ex-slave dealer, what the French call a “lapin,” talked of his adventures in the past, told how he had smuggled slaves into the coast towns almost before the Christian consul’s eyes, sung Shillah songs in a high, quavering falsetto, and boasted of his prowess in the saddle, occasionally bursting into a suppressed chuckle at the idea of taking a Christian into Tarudant.

Almost before we were aware of it, on going down a slope between some bushes, we found ourselves right in the middle of a crowded market. These country markets are a feature of Morocco, and, I think, of almost every Arab country. Often they are held miles away from any house, but generally on an upland open space with water near. When not in use they reminded me of the “rodeos,” on to which the Gauchos, in La Plata, used to drive their cattle to count, to mark, part out, or to perform any of the various duties of an “estanciero’s” [97] life. The markets usually are known by the day of the week on which they are held, as Sok el Arba, Sok el Thelatta, el Jamiz, and so forth; the Arabs using Arba, Tnain, Thelatta, “one, two, three” etc., to designate their days. This market, in particular, I knew to be the Sok es Sebt, but thought we had been some distance from it, and all my assurance was required to make my way amongst at least two thousand people with the dignity which befits a Moorish gentleman upon a journey. Arabs and Berbers, Jews and Haratin (men of the Draa province, of mixed race) were there, all talking at the fullest pitch of strident voices, all armed to the teeth. Ovens with carcases of sheep roasting entire inside them, cows, camels, lines of small brown tents made to be packed upon a mule and called “Kituns,” dust, dust, and more dust, produced the smell, as of wild beasts, which emanates from Eastern crowds. Moors from Morocco city in white fleecy haiks I carefully avoided, as being my equals in supposititious rank, and, therefore, likely to address me. Berbers in striped brown rags, and wrapped in the curious mantle, called an “achnif” in Shillah, made of black wool with fringes and an orange-coloured eye, about two feet in length, woven into the back, abounded; through them I shoved my horse, not even looking down when the poor fellows lifted my cloak and kissed the hem, and, passing through majestically, I heard some mutter, “That Sherif is very proud for one so thin,” fat being amongst Moors a sign of wealth, as it was evidently amongst the Jews, if we are to take the testimony of the Old Testament as worthy of belief.

To ride right through a market and pass on would have looked suspicious, as markets in Morocco form a sort of medium for exchange of news, in the same manner that in old times the churchyard was a kind of club; witness the story of the elder who was heard to say—“he would not give all the sermons in the world for five good minutes of the churchyard clash.” So, after having gone about a quarter of a mile, we got under some olive trees (zeitun, from whence the Spanish aceituna, an olive), and, sitting in the shade, sent Swani to the market to buy some “Schwah,” that is, some of the carcase of a sheep roasted whole “en barbecue.” Various poor brothers in Mohammed came to assure themselves of my complete good health; but Mohammed el Hosein informed them the Sherif was ill, and, giving them some copper coins, they testified to the existence of the one God, and hoped that He might in His mercy soon make me well. Being schooled as to the form to be observed, I looked up slowly, and, raising one hand, muttered as indistinctly as I could that God was great, and that we all were in His hands. This pleased Mohammed el Hosein so much that when we were alone he assured me I must have been born a Sherif, and could I but speak Arabic a little less barbarously that our journey would have been productive, as Sherifs make it a practice, whilst giving small copper to the poor, to cadge upon their own account from the better classes, of course for Allah and His Holy Prophet’s sake. Lutaif, who in his character of Syrian, talked almost incessantly to anyone we met, elicited that this particular market called “Sok es Sebt,” the “Sixth Day Market,” is one of four held in Morocco on a Saturday, thus showing that the Jews have got most of the trade into their hands, and do not care that markets should be held upon their holy day. We tore the “Schwah” between our fingers, in the “name of God”; it tasted much like leather cooked in suet; we passed the ablutionary water over our hands, moving them to and fro to dry, drank our green tea, and were preparing for a siesta when it was rumoured that an English Jew was soon expected to arrive. Having still less acquaintance with Yiddish than with Arabic, and being certain that the English Israelite would soon detect me, and fall on one shoulder exclaiming “S’help me, who would have thought of meeting a fellow-countryman out ’ere!” I saddled up and started as majestically as I felt I could upon my way. The start was most magnificent, Swani and Mohammed helping to arrange my clothes when I had clambered to my seat, and all went well with the exception that no one happening to hold Lutaif’s off stirrup, and the huge Moorish mule saddle, called a “Sirijah,” being so slackly girthed, that it is almost impossible to scale it all alone, he fell into the dust, and Ali coming up to help with a broad grin received a hearty “Jejerud Din!” (“Curse your religion!”), which caused a coolness during the remainder of the journey. Lutaif, though a good Christian and as pious as are most dwellers on the Lebanon, yet came from the country where, as Arabs say, “the people all curse God,” referring to the imprecation on their respective creeds, which is most faithfully taken and received between Maronite and Druse, Christian and Moslem, and all the members of the various jarring sects who dwell under the shadow of the cedars on those most theologic hills. Nestling into the gorges of the hills, and crowning eminences, were scattered villages of the true Atlas type, built all of mud, flat roofed, the houses rising one over the other like a succession of terraces or little castles, and being of so exactly the same shade as the denuded hills on which they stand as to be almost impossible to make out till you are right upon them. At times so like is village to hill, and hill to village, that I have taken an outstanding mound of earth to be a house, and many times have almost passed the village, not seeing it was there.

Riding along and dangling my feet out of the stirrups to make the agony of the short stirrup leather, hung behind the girths, endurable, it struck me what peaceful folks the Arabs really were. Here was a traveller almost totally unarmed, for the Barcelona and Marseilles “snap-haunces” we had borrowed at the Palm-Tree House were hardly to be called offensive weapons; without a passport, travelling in direct defiance of the Treaty of Madrid, in Arab clothes, asserting that he was an Arab or a Turk (as seemed convenient). So, unattended, for defensive purposes, I rode along quite safely, or relatively safely, except from all the risks that wait upon the travellers in any country of the world, such as arise from stumbling horses and the like, fools, and the act of God.

What was it that stopped a band of Arabs on the lookout for plunder? What stood between us and a party of the “Noble Shillah race”? Either or both could easily have plundered us and thrown our bodies into some silo and no one would have known. The truth is, in Morocco, when one reflects upon the inconveniences of the country, the lonely roads, the places apparently designed by Providence to make men brigands, and the fact that almost every Arab owns a horse and is armed at least with a stout knife, that the inhabitants are either cowardly to a degree, are law-abiding to a fault, or else deprived by nature of initiative to such extent as to be quite Arcadian in the foolish way in which they set about to rob. When I remembered Mexico not twenty years ago, before Porfirio Diaz turned the brigands, who used to swarm on every road, into paid servants of the Government, men on a journey from the Rio Grande to San Luis Potosi all made their wills and started weighted down with Winchesters, pistols and bowie-knives, besides a stout machete stuck through their saddle-girths. So Morocco seemed to me a perfect paradise.

In the republic of the Eagle and the Cactus, the tramways running to the bullfights at Tacubaya frequently were held up by armed horsemen and the passengers plundered of everything they had about them. Stage coaches often were attacked by “road agents” and everyone inside of them stripped naked, although the robbers, being caballeros, generally distributed some newspapers amongst them to cover up their nakedness. In the old monarchy, murder was pretty frequent, but it was chiefly the result of private vengeance, and though the tribes fought bloody battles now and then, a travelling stranger seldom was molested by them, except he got in the way.

Real highway robbery seemed not to flourish in Morocco, perhaps because the atmosphere of monarchy was less congenial to it than the free air of a republic, though that could surely not have been the case, as virtue is a plant that grows from the top downwards, and both the President and Sultan, at the time I write about, are robbers to the core.

Occasionally in the Shereefian Empire, a Jew returning from a fair was set upon and spoiled, and now and then in lowered voices, as you jogged along the road, were pointed out to you the place where Haramin [102a] had slain a man thirty or forty years ago.

This is the case in all those portions of Morocco where Christians travel; that is to Fez, to Tetuan, from Mazagan to the city of Morocco, and generally about Tangier, the coast towns and the Gharb. [102b] Outside those spheres the case is different; and in the Riff, the Sus, Wad Nun, or even a few miles outside of Mequinez, a Christian’s life, or even that of a Mohammedan from India, Persia or the East, would not be worth a “flus.” [102c] We rested for our mid-day halt upon the open plain under the shadow of a great rock, the heat too great to eat, and passed the time smoking and drinking from our porous water-jars, until the “enemy,” as the Arabs call the Sun, sank down a little; then in the cool we went on through a wilderness of cactus and oleanders, almond and fig trees, with palms and apricots, till sandy paths zigzagging between aloe hedges with a few tapia walls backed by a ruined castle, betokened we were near Asif-el-Mal. Asif means river in Shillah, and at the foot of the crumbling walls a river ran, making things green and most refreshing to the eyes after ten hours of fighting with the enemy, enduring dust, and kicking at our animals after the fashion which all men adopt upon a journey; not that it helps the animals along, but seems to be a vent for the impatience of the traveller. Norias [103a] creak, a camel with a donkey and a woman harnessed to one of them, water pours slowly out of the revolving “Alcuzas,” [103b] and at the trough the maidens of the village stand waiting to fill their water-jars, shaped like an amphora, which they carry on the shoulders with a strap braced round their hands. Asif-el-Mal boasts a Mellah, and Jews at once came out to offer to trade with us, to talk, and hear the news. Intelligent young Jews, MoisÉs, Slimo, and Mordejai with Baruch, and all the other names, familiar to the readers of the Old Testament, flock round us. All can read and write, can keep accounts, as well as if they had been born in Hamburg; most have ophthalmia, some are good-looking, pale with great black eyes, and every one of them seems to be fashioned with an extra joint about the back. Yet hospitable, civil and a link with Europe, which they have never seen; but about which they read, and whose affairs they follow with the keenest interest, all knowing Gladstone’s name and that of Salisbury; all longing for the day when they can put on European clothes and blossom out arrayed after the gorgeous fashion of the tribe in Mogador. Each of them wears a love-lock hanging upon his shoulder, and, without doubt, if they were but a little bit more manly-looking, they would be as fine young men as you could wish to see.

Their race almost controls the town, Berbers are few and hardly any Arabs but the Sheikh and his immediate following live in the place. A proof the land is good, the soil productive, and the water permanent; for when did Jews set up their tabernacles on an unproductive soil, in a poor town, or follow the fortunes of any one who was not rich? Their chief, Hassan Messoud, a venerable man, dressed in a long blue gown, a spotted belcher pocket-handkerchief over his head and hanging down behind in a most unbecoming style, advanced to greet us. Perhaps he was the finest Eastern Jew I ever saw; a very Moses in appearance, as he might have been on Sinai a little past his prime, and yet before the ingratitude of those he served had broken him. Beside him walks his daughter, a Rebecca, or Zohara, bearing fresh butter in a lordly tin dish, and bread baked upon pebbles, with the impression of the stones upon the underside. Such bread the chosen people have left in Spain, and still in Old Castille amongst the “Cristianos Rancios,” who hate the very name of Jew, and think that the last vestige of their customs has long left Spain, the self-same bread is eaten at Easter, if I remember rightly; and so, perhaps, the true believer (Christian this time) unwittingly bakes bread which yet may damn him black to all eternity.

Hassan comes quickly into the tent, and bids us welcome in Jewish Arabic; and waiting cautiously till even our own Moors have left the tent, breaks into Spanish and asks me of what nationality I am. I tell him from “God’s country,” and he says, “Ingliz,” to which I answer, “Yes, or Franciz, for both are one.” He grins, squatting close to the door of the tent, servile, but dignified, full six feet high, his black beard turning grey, and hands large, fat, and whitish, and which have never done hard work. We talk, and then Hassan takes up his parable. Glory to Allah he is rich, and all the Governors are his dear friends, that is they owe him money; and as he talks the old-time Spanish rhyme comes to my memory, which, talking of some Jews who came to see a certain king, speaks of their honeyed words, and how they praised their people and boasted of their might.

“Despues vinieron Don Salomon y Don Ezequiel,
Con sus dulces palabras parecen la miel,
Hacen gran puja, de los de Israel.”

And yet Hassan was but easy of dispense, wearing the clothes of an ordinary Morocco Jew, with nothing to indicate his wealth.

As we sat talking to him of the exchange in Europe; about the Rothschilds, Sassoons, Oppenheims, and others of the “chosen” who bulk largely in the money columns of the daily press of Europe (all of whom he knew by name), and interchanging views about the late Lord Beaconsfield, whom Hassan knew as Benjamin ben Israel, the daughters of God’s folk came out upon the house-tops, dressed in red and yellow, with kerchiefs on their heads, eyes like the largest almonds, lips like full-blown pomegranates, and looked with pride upon their headman talking to the Sherif or Christian Caballer, whichever he might be, on equal terms. Strange race, so intellectual, so quick of wit, so subtle, and yet without the slightest dignity of personal bearing; handsome, and yet without the least attraction, conquering the Arabs as they conquer Saxons, Latins, or all those with whom they come in contact upon that modern theatre of war—the Stock Exchange. Hassan Messoud having protested that by the God of Abraham we were all welcome, retired and left us to pitch our tent upon a dust-heap in a courtyard, between some ruined houses and the village wall.

Under the moonlight, the distant plain looked like a vast, steely-blue sea, the deep, red roads all blotted out, the palms and olives standing up exactly as dead stalks of corn stand up in an October wheat-field. The omnipresent donkeys and camels of the East hobbled or straying in the foreground beneath the walls, and the mysterious, silent, white-robed figures wandering about like ghosts, the town appeared to me to look as some Morisco village must have looked in Spain when the Mohammedans possessed the land, and villages brown, ruinous, and hedged about with cactus like Asif-el-Mal, clung to the crags, and nestled in the valleys of the Sierra de Segura, or the Alpujarra.

At daybreak, Hassan Messoud appeared with breakfast at our tent, olives and meat in a sauce of oil and pepper, not appetising upon an empty stomach, but not to be refused without offence. Then, throwing milk upon the ground from a small gourd, he blessed us, and invoked the God of Israel to shield us on our way. A worthy, kindly, perhaps usurious, but most hospitable Israelite, not without guile (or property), a type of those Jews of the Middle Ages from whom Shakespeare took Shylock, and in whose hands the lords, knights, squires, and men-at-arms were as a Christian stockbroker, cheat he as wisely as he can, is to-day in the hands of any Jew who, a few months ago, retailed his wares in Houndsditch; but who, the Exchange attained to, walks its precincts as firmly as it were Kodesh, and he a priest after the order of Melchizedec. Riding along the trail which runs skirting the foothills of the Atlas, and forces us to dive occasionally into the deep dry “nullah,” for there are only six or seven bridges in all Morocco, and none near the Atlas, the vegetation changes, and again we pass dwarf rhododendrons, arbutus, and kermes-oak, and enter into a zone of plants like that of southern Spain, with the exception that here the mignonette becomes a bush, and common golden rod grows four feet high, with a thick woody stem. White poplars, walnuts, elms, and a variety of ash are planted round the houses. From the eaves hang strings of maize cobs; bee-hives like those the Moors left in Spain, merely a hollow log of wood, or roll of cork, lie in the gardens; grape vines climb upon the trees, producing grapes, long, rather hard, claret-coloured, and aromatic, the best, I think, in all the world, and which have fixed themselves upon the memory of my palate, as have the oranges of Paraguay.About mid-day, upon a little eminence, we sight the tower of the Kutubieh, the glory of Morocco; but the city is, so to speak, hull down, and the white tower seems to hang suspended in the air without foundations; indeed, it looks so thin at the great distance from which we see it, as to be but a mere white line standing up in the plain and pointing heavenwards, that is, if towers built by false prophets do not point to hell. All day my horse, really the best I ever rode in all Morocco, had been uneasy, wanting to lie down; so disregarding the advice of Mohammed el Hosein to prick him with my knife and pray to God, somewhat prosaically I got off, and, unsaddling him, found his shoulder fearfully swollen, and understood how I came possessed of a horse the like of which few Christians, even for money, get hold of from a Moor. I saw at once he had a fistulous sore right through the withers; incurable without an operation and a long rest. Then I believed what Mohammed el Hosein had told me, that the horse was from the other side of the Atlas and had been used in ostrich-hunting, for a better and more fiery beast I never rode, and though thin, rough, and in the worst condition, had he been sound-backed, quite fit to carry me to Timbuctoo.

The Arabs have an idea upon a journey that a man should dismount as seldom as he can. They say dismounting and remounting tires the horse more than a league of road, they therefore sit the livelong day without dismounting from their seat. The Gauchos, on the contrary, say it helps a horse to get off now and then and lift the saddle for a moment, loosening the girth so that the air may get between the saddle and the back. This the Moors hold to be anathema, and Spaniards, Mexicans, and most horsemen of the south agree that the saddle should not be shifted till the horse is cool, on pain of getting a sore back. Who shall decide when horsemen disagree? However, the Gauchos all girth very tightly, and the Arabs scarcely draw the girth at all, their saddles repose on seven (the number is canonical) thick saddle cloths, and are kept in their place more by the breastplate than the girth. It may be therefore that, given the loose girth, short stirrup leathers, and their own flowing clothes, personal convenience has more to do with the custom of not getting off and on than regard for the welfare of their beast. The Arabs in Morocco, though fond of horses, treat them roughly and foolishly; at times they cram them with unnecessary food, at times neglect them; their feet they almost always let grow too long, their legs they spoil by too tight hobbling, and if upon a journey their horse tires they ride him till he drops.

Across the mountains and amongst the wilder desert tribes, this is not so, and travellers all agree that the wild Arab really loves his horse; but he has need of him to live, whereas inside Morocco horses are used either for war or luxury, or because the man who rides them cannot afford a mule. The pacing mule, throughout North Africa, is as much valued as he was in Europe in the Middle Ages, and commands a higher price than any horse; yet whilst allowing that he is dogged as a Nonconformist, on the road, sober and comfortable, to my eye, a man wrapped in a white burnouse, perched on a saddle almost as large as the great bed of Ware, looks fitter to be employed to guard a harem than to enjoy the company of the houris inside. Necessity (in days gone by) has often forced me to ride horses with a “flower” [108] on their backs or with a sore which rendered every step they made as miserable to me as it was hell to them; but as on these occasions I rode either before an Indian Malon, [109a] or for the dinner of a whole camp, so I at once determined that, notwithstanding any risk, I would purvey me a new horse at the next stopping place. As it turned out, the changing horses and the talk which ensued, as the owner of the horse and I tried to deceive each other about our beasts, was the occasion of my never reaching Tarudant. At least I think so, and if it was, some better traveller will do that which I failed in doing, write a much better book than any I could write, and if he be a practical and pushful man spare neither horses on the road, nor stint the public of one iota of his “facts,” for to the pushful is the kingdom of the earth. As to what sort of kingdom they have made of it, it is beyond the scope of this poor diary to enquire.

We crossed the Wad el Kehra, and early in the afternoon tied up our animals under a fig-tree, with a river running hard by, a stubble field in front, and Amsmiz itself crowning a hill upon our right. Amongst the “algarobas,” [109b] fig-trees and poplars, swallows flit, having come south, or perhaps migrated north from some more southern land.

At the entrance of the town stood the palace of the Kaid, an enormous structure made of mud and painted light rose-pink, but all in ruins, the crenellated walls a heap of rubbish, the machicolated towers blown up with gunpowder. The Kaid, it seems, oppressed the people of the town and district beyond the powers of even Arabs and Berbers to endure; so they rebelled, and to the number of twelve thousand besieged the place, took it by storm, and tore it all to pieces to search for money in the walls.Most people in Morocco if they have money, hide it in the walls of their abode, but the Kaid of Amsmiz was wiser, and had sent all his to Mogador. He fought to the last, then cutting all his women’s throats, mounted his favourite horse and almost unattended “maugre all his enemies, through the thickest of them he rode,” leaving his stores well-dressed with arsenic, so that, like Samson in his fall, he killed more of his enemies than in his life. To-day he is said to live in Fez, greatly respected, a quiet old Arab with a fine white beard, whose greatest pleasure is to tell his rosary.

Curious how little the Oriental face is altered by the storms of life. I knew one, Haj Mohammed el —, —a scoundrel of the deepest dye—who in his youth had poisoned many people, had tortured others, assassinated several with his own hand, and yet was a kindly, courteous, venerable gentleman, whose hobby was to buy any eligible young girl he heard of, to stock his harem. One day I ventured to remark that he was getting rather well on in years to think of such commodities. He answered; “Yes, but then I buy them as you Christians buy pictures—to adorn my house; by Allah, my heirs will be the gainers by my mania.” Yet the man’s face was quiet and serene, his eyes bright as a sailor’s, his countenance as little marred by wrinkles as those one sees upon the Bishops’ benches in the House of Lords; and as he stroked his beard, and told his beads, he seemed to me a patriarch after the type of those depicted in the Old Testament. Perhaps it is the lack of railways, with their clatter, smoke, and levelling of all mankind to the most common multiple; but still it is the case—an Eastern scoundrel’s face is finer far than that a Nonconformist Cabinet Minister displays, all spoiled with lines, with puckers round the mouth, a face in which you see all natural passion stultified, and greed and piety—the two most potent factors in his life—writ large and manifest.

An orange grove, backed by a cane-brake, with the canes fluttering like flags, was near to us; cows, goats, and camels roamed about the outskirts of the town, as in Arcadia—that is, of course, the Arcadia of our dreams—or of Theocritus.

Jews went and came, saluting every one, and being answered: “May Allah let you finish out your miserable life”; but yet as pleased as if they had been blessed. Their daughters came, like Rebecca, to the well—all carrying jars—unveiled, and yet secure, for in this land few Moors cast eyes upon the daughter of a Jew.

Upon the ramparts, shadowy white-robed figures, with long guns, go to and fro, guarding the town from hypothetic enemies. Through an arch, between two palm-trees, the Kutabieh rises, distant and slender, and the white haze around its base shows where Marakesh lies. On every hedge are blackberries and travellers’ joy; whilst a large honeysuckle, in full flower, smells better than all Bucklersbury in simple time; a jay’s harsh cry sounds like the howl of a coyote, and Europe seems a million miles away. In the evening light, the footpaths, which cut every hill, shine out as they had all been painted by some clever artist, who had diluted violet with gold.

Nothing reminds one that within half a mile a town, in which three thousand people live, is near, except the footpaths which zigzag in and out, crossing the fields, emerging out of woods, and intersecting one another, as the rails seem to do at Clapham Junction. A fusillade tells that a Sherif from the Sus has just arrived; all Amsmiz sally forth to meet him mounted upon their best, charging right up to the Sherif, and firing close to his horse—wheeling and yelling like Comanches—making a picture shadowy, fantastic, and unbelievable to one who but three weeks ago had left a land of greys. The Sherif’s people open fire, and when the smoke clears off the Sherif himself, mounted upon a fine white horse, rides slowly forward, holding a green flag. The people fall into a long line behind him, which, by degrees, is swallowed up under the horse-shoe gateway of the town. Mohammed el Hosein, whom I had sent to look out for a horse, appears with a little, undersized, and brachycephalic Shillah, leading a young, black horse, unshod, with feet as long as coops, in good condition and sound in wind and limb, and with an eye the blackest I have seen in mortal horse—a sign of perfect temper; incontinently I determine in my mind to buy him at all cost. We praise our horses—that is, the Shillah praises his—but I, as a Sherif, am far too grand to do so at first hand; so Swani lies like a plumber about mine—which stands and kicks at flies, and looks—like horses do when one is just about to part with them—much more attractive than one ever thought before.

The Shillah leads up his horse, which I pretend hardly to notice; and, luckily for me, he speaks no Arabic. Then he looks at my horse, and, I imagine, grabs him, for Swani springs upon the horse’s back, and runs him ventre À terre over the rough stubble, and, stopping with a jerk—the horse’s feet cutting the ground like skates—gets off, and says that, help him, Allah, the horse is fit for Lord Mohammed, and that I only sell him because I am so tender-hearted about the sore upon his back.

This makes the Shillah think there is a “cat shut up inside,” [112] for no one sells a horse for a sore back amongst his tribe. We try his horse—that is, Mohammed el Hosein makes him career about the field without a bridle; and then I mount him, and display what I consider horsemanship. Nine dollars and the horse? By Allah, seven; but the Shillah, who has not tried my horse, looks at his colt, and says: “I brought him up, fed him with camel’s milk, rode him to war, and he is six years old; nine dollars and the horse.” We shake our heads; and he, mounting his horse, yells like a Pampa Indian, and charging through the cane-brake bare-backed, and with nothing but a string on one side of his horse’s neck, rushes up a steep bank and disappears, riding like a Numidian. I say it was a pity I did not give the nine, but am assured all is not over, and that the man has probably gone to bring back “a bargain-striker” to complete the sale. Throughout Morocco, when animals change hands, the bargaining lasts sometimes for a week; and at the last a man appears, sometimes a passer-by, who is pressed into the undertaking, who, seizing on the bargainers’ right hands, drags them together, and completes the deal.

In about half-an-hour our man comes back, bringing the local “Maalem,” that is Smith, who talks and talks, and as he talks surveys me from the corner of his eye. At last the Shillah yields, takes the seven dollars, counts them with great attention, tapping each one of them upon a stone to see if “it speaks true,” and then mounting my horse essays its paces. As it fell out the horse, which galloped like a roe, with Swani, set off with a plunge which almost sent the Shillah over one side, and turning flew to the mules and stopping by them refused to move a step. The Shillah thought, of course, he had been done, and I had most reluctantly to mount the horse and make him go. We give our word the horse is not a jibber, and swear by Allah if he is, and the Shillah will send him back to Mogador, he shall receive his money and his own horse on our return.He takes our word at once and grasps my hand, puts his own bridle on my horse, and bending down kisses his own horse underneath the neck, and says, in Shillah, that he hopes I shall never ill-treat it, I promise (and perform) and bid my own horse farewell after my fashion, and the Shillah mounts and rides out of my life towards the town. A little dour and fish-eyed, turbanless and ragged man, legs bowed from early riding, face marked with scars, a long, curved knife stuck through a greasy belt, hands on a horse as if they came from heaven; his farewell to his horse was much more real than is the leavetaking of most men from their wives, and moved me to the point of being about to call him back and break the bargain, had I not reflected that the pang once over, the poor Shillah would never in his life be at the head of so much capital. [114]

In less than half-an-hour the Maalem had shod the horse, shortening its feet with an iron instrument shaped like a trowel, and nailing on the shoes, which almost cover the whole foot, with home-made nails; he stays to guard our animals (and spy upon us), and we prepare for our first al fresco night.

Unlike America, where travellers sleep out of doors from Winnipeg to Patagonia, in the East, except in crossing deserts, to sleep out of doors without a tent is quite exceptional, and yet one never sleeps so soundly as on a fine night beside a fire, one’s head upon a saddle, feet to the fire, and the stars to serve as clock. Even the wandering Arabs generally carry tents, and thus, in my opinion, all through the East much of the charm of camping out is lost. All that we do is a convention, and Arabs are not savages, but on the contrary even the Bedouins are highly civilised after their fashion, and the civilised man must always have a roof, even of canvas, over his head to shut out nature. Not but that your common Moors, like to “your Kerne of Ireland” in ancient days, do not sleep out, for nothing is more common than on a rainy night, in camping at a village, for the Sheikh to send a guard to watch a traveller’s horses, and for the guard to “liggen in their hoods” all the night long. So at Amsmiz, under a fig tree, I made my camp, despite the protests of Lutaif, the Maalem, [115] and Mohammed el Hosein, who joined in saying that it was not decent for a man of my (Moorish) position to camp outside the town. Swani himself was rather nervous, and, as it turned out, there may have been some risk, for a strong “war-party,” as they would say upon the frontiers in America, drove almost every head of cattle belonging to the town that very night. We slept as sound as door-mice, and the Maalem, who kept watch with an old muzzle-loading rifle stamped with the Tower mark, slept like a top, knowing the duty of a most ancient guard, for during the night I thought I heard a noise of people passing, and waking saw him fast asleep with the old rifle by his side full cocked, and with a bunch of rushes in its muzzle either for safety or for some other reason not made plain. Darwin relates the peculiar and ineffaceable impression a night he slept under the stars, upon the Rio Colorado, in Patagonia, made on him. He says the cold blue-looking sky, the stars, the silence, the dogs keeping watch, the horses feeding tied to their picket pins, and the sense of being cut off from all mankind, appealed to him more than the beauty of the tropics, the grandeur of the Andes, or anything that he remembered in his travels. And he was right. Nothing appeals to civilised and to uncivilised alike so much as a fine night when one sleeps near one’s horse, and wakes occasionally to listen to the noises of the night. Men from the counter, from the university, riff-raff of towns cast out like dross into a frontier territory, all feel the spell. The Indians and the Arabs feel it, but do not know exactly what they feel; still, in a house, under a roof, they pine for something which I am certain is the open air at night.

’Tis said some ancient wise philosopher once took an Indian from the southern Pampa and showed him all the delights, the pomps and vanities, of Buenos Ayres: showed him the theatre with Christian girls dancing half naked, took him to Mass at the cathedral, led him along the docks, let him fare sumptuously, and then accompanied him to gaze upon the multifarious faces of strange women, who used to lean from almost every balcony and beckon to the stranger in that town; and then the Indian, fed, instructed, with his mind enlarged by all the pomp and circumstance of a Christian town, was asked to say if he liked Buenos Ayres or the Pampa best. The story goes that, after pondering a while, the Indian answered: “Buenos Ayres very large, beautiful things, very wonderful, Christian women kind to poor Indian, but the Pampa best.” A brutish answer of a brute mind. ’Tis patent that the man was quite incapable of understanding all he saw; no doubt our gospel truths were all unknown to him, the philosopher who took him round to haunts of low debauchery either a fool or knave; but on the other hand, riddle me this: how many men of cultivation, education, and the rest have seen the Pampa, prairie, desert, or the steppes, and putting off the shackles of their bringing-up, stayed there for life, and become Indians, Arabs, Cossacks, or Gauchos; but who ever saw an Indian, Arab, or wild man of any race come of his own accord and put his neck into the noose of a sedentary life, and end his days a clerk?

And so of faiths. The missionary for all his preaching would never mark a sheep, had he but gospel truths alone to draw upon. What brings the savage to the fold is interest, guns, cotton cloth, rum, tea, sugar, coffee, and the thousand things for which a commentator might search the Scriptures through from end to end and not find mentioned. In Central Africa the Christian and the Moslem missionary are both at work marking their sheep as fast as may be, and each one as much convinced as is the other of the justice of his cause. With a fair field, without the adventitious aids of Christian goods, the Moslem wins hands down.

The Christian comes and says “My negro friends, believe in Christ,” and the poor negro, always eager to believe in anything, assents, and then the Christian sets him to black his boots, and all that negro’s life he never rises to an equality with his converter. Then comes the Mussulman and cries “Only one God.” The fetish worshipper who has had a dozen all his life, thinks it a little hard to give them up, but does so, becomes a Moslem, and is eligible to be Sultan, Basha, Vizier, Kaid, Sheikh, or what not; so that, put rum and rifles on one side, let preaching be the test, in fifty years from the Lake Chad to Cape Town there would not be a single negro, except a few who stuck to their old gods, outside Islam.

I slept but fitfully, knowing if I could leave Amsmiz without suspicion that I was sure to reach my journey’s end. The night wore on, the sapphire sky changing to steely-blue; as the muezzin called at the Feyer, [117] great drops of dew hung from the leaves; up from the river rose the metallic croaking of the frogs; Canopus was just setting; across the sky, the mirage of the dawn stole stealthily, the mules stood hanging down their heads upon the picket rope, a jackal howled somewhere far out upon the plain; Allah perhaps looked down, and not far off from me baited quite peacefully my (new) destrere on “herbes fine and good.”