Next morning rain was still coming down in torrents and we awoke to find our tent, in spite of all precautions, swimming in water. Nothing to do, even without the “hospitality” of the Kaid, but to cower over a charcoal brazier, and to send Swani to try and buy provisions for our breakfast. After a little he returned bringing the chamberlain, who informed us rather tartly that the Kaid Si Taieb ben Si Ahmed El Hassan El Kintafi [148] sold no provisions, but that we and our animals would be cared for at his expense. In about half an hour two negro slaves appeared, bringing couscousou and meat cut up and stewed with pumpkins, and so we fell to with an appetite improved by the past days spent on short commons. People arrived in bands and squatted down before the tent, and when one band had seen enough, another took its place and sat on doggedly for half an hour with the rain dripping down their backs. Till about midday, when the rain began to slacken, no one addressed us, though a man, shod with sandals of oxhide with the hair on, after the style of those used in the outer Hebrides till a few years ago, and once worn by all Scotchmen, as the name “rough-footed Scot” implies, looked at us, opened his mouth, but then thought better of it and passed away. Had he but spoken, it would have been in Shillah, but still I wish I knew what that poor tribesman was about to say.After the midday prayer, a jet-black negro walked into the tent, dressed all in white with a large silver earring hanging from one ear and with three stripes tattooed or scarified upon his cheek. He sat down in a friendly manner on my cloak, which I drew to me and he then sat quite as contentedly on the wet mud. He spoke good Arabic, and to my observation that it was cold, replied “Yes, but not half so cold as London.” Thinking it was a joke, I said, “That is extremely likely, but have you been there?” and I then learned he had been there twice, in the suite of a Sheikh from the Sahara who had been in London about some business of the Cape Juby Company. The Cape Juby Company was one of those strange ventures which when they fail, men say that their promoters were all mad, but if they prosper make their projectors founders of empires, and people think their brains effected that which was really chance. There is no really sane head either on horseback [149a] or the Stock Exchange.
Almost in sight of Fuerteventura, the nearest in shore of the Canaries, between Wad Nun and the Cabo de Bojador, not quite within the tropics, Cape Juby lies. From the Wad Nun, almost to St. Louis Senegal, nothing but sand, a lowish coast, no settled population, and but little water; and yet a Scotchman, one Mr. Mackenzie, who in the seventies had an idea to flood the Sahara and trade direct from London to Timbuctoo, induced some lords and gentlemen to found a company and put their factory on an island off the Cape. [149b]
The island is a lone rock, disjoined from land by a little channel at high tide. Upon it, without much ceremony, the company erected buildings, built a wall, mounted the inevitable cannon to keep the peace, and tried to start a trade. Just opposite the island grow a few tamarisk bushes, in Arabic called Torfaia, and near these bushes is a brackish well. The tamarisks give the name, and the spot is called Torfaia up and down the coast, being remarkable as the only place where any vegetation lives. The population is nomad and composed of wandering Arab tribes, who in remote times came from the Yemen and still speak the dialect of the Koreish in all its purity. When the wind blows, the sand moves like a sea, so that the company found their walls, built for defence, were in about three months all sanded up, and an Arab on his camel could fire right down into the fort.
Upon this likely spot Mr. Mackenzie and his company pitched to establish trade with the interior of the Sahara, pending the time their ships could sail direct to Timbuctoo. If I remember rightly, the Empire (British) was to be increased, the wandering Arabs all to acknowledge Queen Victoria’s reign, and peace and plenty, with a fair modicum of profit, be the order of the day.
Below Wad Nun the Arab tribes live practically as they lived in Arabia before Mohammed. Morocco is too far away to be much feared, the negro tribes to the south and east not strong enough to fight, the Touaregs not disposed to attack men like the Arabs who can only give hard knocks; whilst in the Senegal the French, in spite of that consuming hunger for sand, as witness Southern Algeria, Tunis, and the desire they are said to have to make a sandy empire from Tripoli to Senegal, are not so foolish as to adventure, merely for glory, to attack the desert tribes. Thus any Sheikh, or Sherif, who has a little power becomes a king, after the style of Chedorlaomer in the Bible, and rules over other kings who do him homage, if he has power enough at his command. Some kinglet of this kind was duly found, and a treaty made with him. In fact, the man appeared in London, passed by the title of King of the Sahara, stayed at a good hotel, and no doubt did members of the company good service by his stay. But as mischance would have it, treason broke out at home whilst the Saharan King was sojourning amongst the infidel. On his return “patriots,” that is, I fancy, other Sheiks the company had overlooked and not “made right,” refused to ratify the treaty, and the poor King was treated as a traitor who had sold his fellows to the Christian dogs.
Years passed away (sixteen I think), and managers went out who drew their salaries; clerks not a few contracted fever, and some died; Arabs attacked the place with varying success; the people of the fort went out to hunt in peace time, and in war sat drinking gin; but still no business was effected, and the whole place began to look like a small Goa, Pondicherry, or some Spanish island in the Eastern seas, where every other man has a fine gold-laced uniform, but has no food to eat. Then some one had a luminous idea, which was to sell the place to the Sultan of Morocco, who, wishing to extend his empire, bought it, and has to-day the pleasure of keeping a steamer running from the Canaries, week in week out, to keep the garrison supplied with water, for the well beneath the tamarisks has given out.
My negro visitor was from Wad Nun, had been to London twice and did not like it, in fact, remembered nothing but the cold and the striking fact that the horses had short tails. Yet he was intelligent after his fashion, and greatly exercised as to the reason which impelled those Argonauts to sail to such a Colchis, and glad to tell how they bought nothing but a little wool, and wondered if they knew of gold mines, or what kept them stuck for sixteen years in such a place. The manager, Mackenzie, was a Scotchman, which he interpreted to be a title of respectability, and informed us that Mackenzie’s name was known far in the Sahara, and that at times natives would ride up, who had never seen him, and greet him as Sidi Mackenzie, for they all had heard of his red beard, his title (Scotchman), and of the strong spirit kept in a barrel which none but he might drink. My negro tapped his head and told me it was full of news, but that, unluckily, his purse was empty, or he would long ago have left the place. I did not take the hint, and he retired wishing me patience, with a negro grin.
Patience was what I most had need of, except, perhaps, tobacco, at the time. So strolling out on to the Maidan, the rain having ceased at last, I sat down on a large stone under an olive tree to think about the situation and enjoy the view. In a magnificent amphitheatre of hills with snowy mountains towering overhead, just at the angle which the Wad el N’fiss makes after the first five miles of its course, about the middle of a valley almost ten miles in length, the Azib [152] of El Kintafi lies; around it fifteen or twenty acres of Indian corn, a grove of olive trees and pomegranate gardens, wild and uncared for as gardens always are throughout the East. The house itself with its mosque, the various court-yards, towers, kiosques, stables, fortified passages, and a long stretch of crenelated wall, covers almost as much ground as Kenilworth or Arundel. Built all of mud, and here and there painted light yellow, it yet looks solid, and in one angle rises the tower of the mosque covered with tiles like those of the Alhambra.The castle wall upon one side runs almost sheer down into the river which tosses on a stony bed, leaving a sort of sandy beach, on which grow oleanders, and across the stream the shoulder of Tisi Nemiri [153] almost reaches to the bank. Above the oleanders ran a mill stream in which the tiniest barble played or hung suspended in the slack water, aping the attitude of salmon lying suspended in the shallow water of a linn. Between the mill stream and the beach grew some Indian corn fenced in with Suddra bushes, looking steely-grey in the bright sun, or as if frosted, when the moon turned every twig and thorn to silver in its cold light. Curious little round hills studded the valley in various directions, and on the west side rose Ouichidan to an apparent height of about fourteen thousand feet, or, say, six thousand feet above the bed of the N’fiss. Almost at the top of Ouichidan there is a spring held sacred by the Berbers, who have retained many Pagan customs and superstitions, although Mohammedans. It is said that from the top a view of both Morocco city and Tarudant is seen, but Allahu Alem, God he knows, for never has the foot of unbeliever trod the snow, nor has the pestilent surveyor, with his boiling tubes, his aneroid, theodolite, and all his trumpery, defiled the peak.
What is known, is that a pass leads into the Sus over a shoulder of the mountain, and a poor Jewish merchant whom I subsequently met, informed me that whilst crossing it he had prayed more fervently than he had done since quite a child, and said devoutly, “May Jehovah keep me from all such cursed roads.” Amongst the maize fields, which at my time of sojourning as guest of El Kintafi were all ripe, negroes and negresses were husking the heads of maize which had been reaped, and were all gathered up in heaps. Their flat and merry faces, red and yellow clothes, loud cries, and air of working as for amusement, brought back the Southern States, and as half the men answered to Quasi, and the women all appeared to be called Sultana, the illusion was complete. Most of the negroes had become Mohammedans, and, of course, the women had to follow suit; few of them spoke Arabic or even Shillah, and a sort of ganger, who spoke Soudanese, lay in the shade and made a show of overseeing their pretence of work. Upon the flat roof of the palace prisoners heavily chained tottered about and husked the Indian corn, each man resolved to do as little work as possible, and spend the greatest possible amount of time in walking to and fro. Poor devils, mostly tribesmen from a rebellious tribe which lived upon the head waters of the N’fiss, and which neither the Kaid, his father, or his grandfather, had ever been quite able to subdue. The rebellious tribe is a feature of the Eastern world. No Sultanate so small, no little caliphate lost in the hills, no territory of mountains or of plains that is without its rebels. Throughout Morocco one comes now and again upon a tribe in open warfare, if not with the Sultan at least against its Governor. They raise an army, fight in the hills, take prisoners and cut their throats, behave, in fact, as Arabs have behaved since they first came into our Western life, and at the last the Sultan or the Governor prevails, and a few dozen heads of the chief tribesmen adorn the city walls, making long smears of blood down the pale yellow wash, and shrivelling by degrees into a hideous mass, like an old fly-blown shoe. Yet on the roof of the Kaid’s Kasbah [154] the prisoners gave a scriptural note, and made one think on Jeremiah, [155] the prisoner-prophet, who must have wandered up and down as they did, before Pashur smote him and set him in the stocks, putting him daily to derision and making everyone to mock at him. Not that the Berbers mocked at the prisoners on the castle roof, but, on the contrary, sat with the blazing sun upon their shaven pates, talking to them from the Maidan, gave them bits of bread, and so behaved themselves that, chains and famine, lice and sores discounted, the condition of the prisoners was nearer to that of men at large than that of the betracted, ticketed transgressors in a London gaol. At times upon the roof the prisoners lay full length and held their chains up in one hand to test their legs, and, lying close to the parapet, chaffed the negroes as they came and went carrying as little maize as possible in small baskets holding about a peck. At night the Kaid, who had a not unnatural wish to keep his prisoners safe, lowered them one by one into a deep, dry well, a mule revolving slowly round a rude kind of capstan, as with an esparto rope hitched in a bowline below their arm-pits, one by one they were lowered underneath the ground. When all were down, four negroes placed a large flat stone over the well, and the Muezzin called on the faithful all to praise God’s name. What the state of the well was down below is hard to say, but in the morning when the stone was rolled aside a stench as from a Tophet rose, and early on the fourth day of our enforced “villegiatura,” a starveling donkey was driven past our tent with the body of a prisoner (escaped from prison and from life) thrown over it, the head and feet dangling upon the ground, and the donkey-driver pricking his beast with a piece of sharpened cane in an old, thoroughly-established sore over which the flies buzzed, settled, flew off again and then alighted on the eyelids of the corpse.
And so the second day went past in rather greater comfort than the first, the rain having ceased, and we became aware that it was best to resign ourselves to what the Kaid and Providence might have in store for us. About the evening prayer I despatched Lutaif to try and get an audience and find out why we were detained, but, after waiting more than an hour at the castle gate, he returned to say that the great man was invisible, but that his Chamberlain would come and see us after supper-time. The Chamberlain not having come by sundown, and our animals not having eaten for four-and-twenty hours, I sent Swani to “stand and cry at the gate,” after the Eastern fashion, with the result that soon the slave who had the key of the corn arrived and struck a bargain with me, I undertaking to tip him handsomely on my departure if he fed our beasts. This he declared he would do, but kept them half-starved, and totally refused to sell, either chopped straw or hay, most probably having got orders from the Kaid to feed our animals well, and having sold half the corn, which he no doubt took everyday out of the granary, to passing travellers. However, unjust stewards are not uncommon even in England, and he kept his key so bright (it measured nearly eighteen inches long), and dressed so charmingly in palest Eau de Nil, with a black cloak bound round with pink, and lied so easily, and with such circumstance, that I forbore to lay his case before the Kaid, reserving to myself the power of not rewarding his hypothetic services at my departure if he went too far in his small villainies. Night brought the Chamberlain heading a small procession of negroes carrying our supper, composed of various dishes of meat and couscousou, piled up on earthenware dishes placed in a wooden case, shaped like an old-time stable sieve and covered with a conical-shaped top of straw through which were run strips of red and black leather in a curious pattern forming a kind of check. A dish of Moorish bread fresh from the oven and made of brownish flour, well-garnished with particles of the rough stones of the bread mill in which the corn was ground, made up the banquet. We squatted on the floor, Swani went round and poured water from a tin dish upon our hands, and, after a pious Bismillah, we all dipped bits of bread in the red grease and oil of the highly seasoned dishes and began to eat, ladling the food into our mouths most painfully with the right hand, and lifting the huge dishes to our mouths to drink the soup. A loud Bon jour warned us the Persian was outside the tent, waiting to tell us his adventures and to impart the gossip of the place. Entering, he sat down with a sonorous “Peace be on you all,” and, after one or two cups of tea and a few cigarettes, began to talk. The Kaid, he said, was puzzled about us, had thought at first of sending us in chains to the Sultan’s camp, again had thought of letting us proceed, and yet again of sending us under a guard of his own men to the Consul at Mogador, but at the last had not imparted his design to our informant. He thought that probably a messenger had been despatched to the Sultan in his camp, and if that was the case we had better make our minds up to at least a fortnight in the place, and afterwards, if the Sultan should send for us, a fortnight at the camp, for things in palaces go slowly; [157] but, said the Persian piously, “may God not open the door of the Sultan to you, or to any other man.” By this I took it that should the Sultan send for us we should pass an unpleasant quarter of an hour, though as there were several Europeans in the camp, notably Kaid M’Lean, the instructor-general to the army, and a French doctor called Linares, we might be able to get things arranged upon the peace-with-honour plan. This matter duly gone into with proper Oriental deliberation, the Persian entered on his tale. Born sometimes in Shiraz, at others in Tabriz (according to his fancy), it appeared that at an early age he had left his country as an Ashik, [158] that is, a wandering singer, and gone to Turkey. There he had acquired the Turkish language as he averred, but subsequent intercourse with Arabs had mixed the tongues; in the same fashion a Spaniard, Italian, or Portuguese gets mixed, on learning either of the kindred languages. Such as it was, his jargon suited me, and I spoke Arabic more fluently to him than I ever spoke that tongue before, or think to speak it until I meet another Ashik similarly graced. We spoke without a verb, without a particle, like idiots or children, largely in adverbs and in adjectives, and without shame on either side, each thinking that the other was but little versed in Arabic, and that he condescended to adopt a jargon to help his weaker friend. The Persian’s faithful fiddle was out of order, owing, he said, to his falling off a donkey whilst on the “roads of hell” which led up to Kintafi, but though without it, he sang for hours, songs which he said treated of love in Persian, and which I took on trust as not containing anything subversive of morality, or fit to raise a blush upon the cheek of those used to our Western ways. Hafiz he said he knew by heart, and much of Jami, and those Rubaiyat which every weekly newspaper has its columns full of he knew, but found them too materialistic for his taste.
In outward visible appearance he was a perfect Kurd, squat and broad-shouldered, his beard so thick that had you dropped a pin in it it would not have touched the skin, eyes black and piercing, face like a walnut, and a long love-lock hanging from his shaven head down on his shoulder; in one ear he wore a silver earring, and he was gifted with a voice perhaps the strongest that I ever heard in man. Both a musician and a philosopher, but yet a moralist, and a fanatic preacher of the graces of Mohammed, but still a sceptic at the heart, and above all a traveller, “for by travelling a man, although his purse grows light, still lays up treasures on which to live when he is old. What is a Sultan, Kaid, Pasha, or Governor, compared to him who is the Sultan of the world, when where night catches him he rests and looks upon the stars?”
So, starting from Shiraz (occasionally Tabriz), he had run over almost all Europe, Turkey, and a portion of the Northern States of Africa. Had been in Serbistan, Atenas, and in Draboulis (Tripoli), Massr-el-Kahira (Cairo), Stamboul, and Buda Pesth, and of all lands in Europe thought most of Magyarstan; “for there the women have eyes like almonds, though they drink too much beer, the men are tall and fierce, handsome (husnar besaf), the horses large and elegant, they run as lightly as gazelles on stony ground; and had the people but the blessing of the true faith, he never would have left their land.” Their city, Buda Pesth, was larger than Stamboul, more fine than Paris, Vienna, or than Shiraz, and in the middle ran a river on which went steamboats, in which he used to travel and pay his passage with a tune, for the Magyars, he said, loved music better than they loved their God. In this famed city he had known one Bamborah, who by interior evidence and after cogitation I found to be Professor Vambery. Large-hearted was this Bamborah, and speaking Persian, a Christian dervish, knowing all the East, having read all books, explored all countries, mastered all sciences and learning; the friend of kings, for had not the Sultan Abdul Hamid (whom may God preserve) sent him a ring of “diamont” worth a thousand pounds, and Bamborah had shown it whilst they sat discoursing in his hospitable house.
In fact of all the men, Christian or Moslem, he had ever met, this Bamborah appeared to him the fittest to stand before a king. But for himself even in Buda Pesth, the travelling fever had impelled him to embark aboard a “chimin de fer,” and go to Vienna, travelling all through the night and reaching Vienna about the feyzir (day break), and straying up and down the streets until at last he met a Turk who sold red slippers, and lodged with him; but after several days spent in the place, which gave him neither pleasure nor material gain, went on to Baris to find upon the journey that the customs of the East and West did not agree. The Christians know no God. With them it is all money (Kulshi flus), with them no stranger, no wayfaring man, for in that train to Baris he asked a woman for some water to wash his hands so as to address Allah after the fashion laid down in the holy books; she brought it, and after washing, and his prayers all duly said, the passengers, as he informed me, crowding about in an unseemly way to see him pray, he smiled and thanked the woman, and taking out a cigarette tendered it to her with his thanks. But she, born of a dog, knowing no God and dead to shame—for is it not set down “to strangers and to wayfarers be kind”?—laughed an ill laugh and asked for half-a-franc: franc, franc, and always franc, that is the Christian’s God.
Thus talking of the Alps and Alpujarras the time wore on, and after saying again most earnestly “May God not open the door of our Lord the Sultan to you,” he took his leave, and as he went it seemed our only friend had gone.
Next morning found the situation still unchanged, and we began to look about us and found out that we had several companions in adversity. Camped in a tent about a hundred yards away were three Kaids (BiblicÉ kings), from the province of the Sus, who had been waiting more than a month for an audience of our captor, he having summoned them to wait upon him to confer, as the gipsies say, about “the affairs of Egypt.” One of the “kings” turned out to be a “saint” of some repute, a tall fine man of Arab type and race, dressed all in spotless white, and reading always in a little copy of some holy book under an olive tree, showing no trace of trouble at his long wait, although he must have passed through much annoyance and incurred considerable expense, as almost all his animals had died through lack of food and the change of climate from the warm lands of Sus to the cold winds of the interior Atlas range.
Under the olive tree I sat and talked to him, chiefly through the medium of Lutaif, and asked him much of Tarudant, from whence his house was situated but a long day’s ride. It appeared that in the main the account of Gerhard Rohlfs, [161a] the Hamburg Jew, who visited it some thirty years ago, is applicable to the city of to-day. The Sherif spoke of the high walls mentioned by Rohlfs and Oskar Lenz; [161b] of the five gates called Bab-el-Kasbah, Bab-el-Jamis, Bab-Ouled ben Noumas, Bab Targount, and Bab Egorgan; of the high Kasbah, occupying, as Rohlfs says, a space of 50,000 square metres, and cut off from the town by a high crenelated wall. He dwelt upon the cheapness of provisions, said that six eggs were bought for a little copper coin called a “musonah” (known to the Spaniards as “blanquillo”) and worth perhaps a farthing. He said a pound of meat cost two or three “musonahs,” spoke of the trade in brass and copper vessels, and gave us to understand, of all the towns within the empire of his Shereifian Majesty, that Tarudant was cheapest and pleasantest to live in, and inferred it was because the people had no dealings with the infidel. For, said he, “the infidel are Oulad el Haram” (sons of the illegitimate), ever a-stirring, never contented with their lot, afraid to be alone, seeing no beauty in the sun, not caring for the sound of running water, and even looking at a fine horse but for his worth; men bound to a wife, the slave of all the things they make; then, recollecting that I too was one of the dog descended, he gravely drew his hand across his beard, and said, “but no doubt Allah made them cunning and wise for some great purpose of his own.”
No doubt, in every town throughout the East, the presence of even a small quantity of Europeans forces prices up, upsets the national life, unsettles men, and after having done so, gives them no equivalent for the mischief that it makes.
The mosques were three in number, one in the Kasbah, two in the town, of which the principal was El Djama-el-Kebir, and the most sacred Sidi-o-Sidi, the Saint of Saints, by which name people of a serious turn of mind call the whole town in conversation, as who should say, speaking of London, the city of St. Paul.
I questioned him about the sugar-cane plantations, of which both Luis de Marmol [162] and Diego de Torres [163a] speak in their curious books written in the middle of the sixteenth century, but he had never heard of sugar-cane near Tarudant. This forms another proof of the decadence into which all the land has fallen, for the climate and soil of Tarudant should be at least as favourable for sugar-cane as is the strip of territory in Spain which runs along the coast from Malaga into the province of Almeria, where the Moors first introduced the canes which grow there still to-day.
It appeared according to the Sherif that the town contained some 1,400 houses, and a population which he estimated at 10,000, [163b] mostly in easy circumstances, but very ill-disposed towards all foreigners. Much information he imparted as to the mineral riches of the province; but without descending to particulars, with the exception of sulphur, which he said was found close to the town. Romans, of course, had left their castles near the place, in the same way the Moors have done in parts of Spain to which they never penetrated; but who those Romans were remains for some more well-graced, or fortunately starred traveller than I to tell of, commentate upon, and weave a theory to content his public and himself. Caravans, it seems, go straight to Timbuctoo taking European goods, and bring back slaves and gold-dust, with ostrich feathers and the other desert commodities, as in the time of Mungo Park. At least they did; but I suppose the French in their consuming zeal for freedom may have stopped slaves from being bought in these degenerate days. I learned the chief fondak or caravansary was kept by one Muley Mustapha el Hamisi; but most unluckily an unkind fate deprived me of the opportunity of entering his hospitable walls. The city seemed to resemble, from the account of the Sherif, Morocco city, that is, to occupy a relatively enormous space, as almost every other house had a large garden, and several of the larger houses gardens of many acres in extent; so that, as the Sherif explained, “the town looks like a silver cup [164a] dropped in a tuft of grass.” This, as I did not see it, I take on trust, believing perhaps that Moses had died happier had he not had the view from Pisgah’s summit over the plains of Canaan. [164b]
And so the Governors waited on patiently, their followers almost starving, and I expect themselves not too much fed, for the Kaid’s servants ate or sold all the provisions which the Chamberlain issued each day to feed the various “guests.” How the poor devils in the prison underground fared I do not know, but now and then a bucket with bread and couscousou was let down to them, and I believe they flew on it like half-starved jackals on a dead donkey outside a Moorish town. Although a semi-prisoner, the Sherif from Sus was still a holy man, and therefore I sent Mohammed-el-Hosein to take refuge with him till all talk of fetters, dungeons, stick and shaving beards was past. This taking refuge (to “zoug,” as it is called) is common in Morocco. At times upon a journey, some man will rush and seize your stirrup, and will not let go till you promise him protection, which, when you do (for it is not easy to refuse), you make yourself an Old Man of the Sea, an Incubus, who has proprietary rights in you, and perhaps follows you to your journey’s end.
The patience of the three Sheikhs gave me an example, and I endeavoured to take our enforced detention as quietly as they did, though without success. It was truly wonderful to see them sitting all day long, half-starved, outside their tent, taking the sun and praying regularly, yet without ostentation, telling their beads, listening to the Sherif read in a low voice from his little sacred book, and praising Allah (I have no doubt) consumedly.
And so the day went past without an incident, except that towards evening, as they drove the cattle home, two tame moufflons came with them, as goats do in a field at home. These moufflons (Oudad) are rather larger than a large goat, almost the colour of a Scotch red deer; a tuft of hair about a span in length grows on their withers and on their dewlap is another of the same size; the eyes are large and full, and very wide, and their chief feature is an enormous pair of curving horns. A wandering Sherif (in this case a kind of fakir) from Taserouelt told me that “they often throw themselves off a cliff a hundred feet in height, and fall upon their horns, and then jump up at once, and run off faster than gazelles run when the hunter shouts to his horse.” Just before evening we met the Kaid’s secretary, a quiet, handsome, literary man, who came and sat with us, and talked long about books, and grew quite friendly with Lutaif on his producing the poems of el Faredi. [166a] They read aloud alternately in a sort of rhythmic sing-song way, pleasing to listen to, and which is taught in Arab schools. Though I did not understand more than a word in five, the language is so fine, I enjoyed it more than all the matchless eloquence of a debate in Parliament.
To read in Arabic is a set art; to read and understand a different branch of scholarship; but these two Talebs both read and understood, and after an hour’s intonation, strophe about, they marvelled at one another’s learning, and like two doughty chieftains in an Homeric fight, stopped often to compliment and flatter one another. “By Allah, it seems impossible a Christian can read and understand el Faredi.” “Strange that a Taleb of the Atlas should know the literal [166b] language as if he were an Eastern” [166c] and the like. The “Taleb of the Atlas” explained he had been the pilgrimage, and lived two years in Mecca, and whilst there (although a Berber) had studied deeply and perfected himself in the knowledge of the East as far as possible. Lutaif explained that though a Christian he was of Arab race, and that he worshipped God, as “Allah,” in the same way as did Mohammedans. “Then,” said the Taleb, half laughing, “either you are a Moslem in disguise, or else a Taleb who has become a Christian.” Seeing the conversation was becoming rather strained, I interrupted and broke it up; but when the Taleb left, Lutaif borrowed my knife and managed to haggle off his beard, though not without abrasion of the cuticle, and though without it he looked less like an Arab, still with his moustache, which he refused to sacrifice, he looked so like a Turk that, as regards appearance, little was gained by all his sufferings.
The next day found us with the same postal address, still without having seen the Kaid, and without a definite idea of his intentions. Most of the people seemed to be certain that a messenger had gone to the Sultan for instructions on our case, but both the Chamberlain, the Taleb, and the Captain of the Guard denied with circumstance, and perjured themselves as cheerfully, and with as much delight in perjury for the mere sake of perjury, as any minister answering a question from the front bench of the grandmother of all parliaments. We passed the time reading el Faredi and an Arabic version of the Psalms; writing and smoking, walking up and down the Maidan, sitting underneath the trees, and watching the Kaid’s horses and mules being driven to the river to bathe and drink. Although a Berber and a mountaineer, the Kaid was fond of horses, and had a stud of about eighty horses and as many mules. Negroes led down the horses all “lither-fat,” for our lord the Kaid had “long lain in,” and there had been no riding in the glen for the past month. Blacks, bays, and chestnuts, with a white or two, and a light cream colour of the kind called by the Spaniards “Huevo de pato,” that is duck’s egg. All rather “chunky,” as the Texans say, some running up to about sixteen hands, mostly all with long tails sweeping upon the ground and manes which fell quite to the point of the shoulder in the older horses. Their tails all set on low (a mark of the Barb breed), their eyes large and prominent, heads rather large, ears long, thin and intelligent, always in motion, backs rather short, round in the barrel, and well ribbed up, straight in the pastern, and feet rather small and high, the consequence of being bred on stony ground.I learned the black [168a] (el Dum) is best for show, but bad in temper, especially if he has no white hairs about him. Ride him not to war, for when the sun shines hot, and water is hard to find, he cannot suffer, and leaves his rider in the power of his enemy. Still the black without moon or stars (white hairs) is a horse for kings, but he fears rocky ground. The chestnut [168b] when he flies beneath the sun, it is the wind. It was a favourite colour with the Prophet, and therefore to be desired of all good Moslems and good horsemen.
The roan is a pool of blood, his rider will be overtaken but will never overtake. The light chestnut (Zfar el Jehudi, the Jews’ yellow) is not for men to ride, he brings ill luck. No wise man would ride a horse with a white spot in front of the saddle, for such a horse is as fatal as the most violent poison. In the same way no prudent man would buy a horse with a white face and stockings, for he carries his own shroud with him.
The white is a colour for princes, but not for war. When you advance afar off your enemy makes ready for you.
The bay is the pearl of colours, for the bay is hardiest and most sober of all horses. Says the Emir Abd-el-Kader, “If they tell you a horse jumped down a precipice without injury, ask if he was a bay, and if they answer yes, believe them.” Lastly, the Emir says with reason, “Speak to your horses as a man speaks to his child, and they will correct their faults which have incurred your anger, for they understand the mouth of man.”
Armed with these maxims and on the look-out for others, I was not dull as long as the horses were in sight. Sometimes a boy would ride them in to swim in the swift current, snorting and plunging till they lost their feet, and then their heads appeared out of the water, their backs almost awash, the boys clinging to them like monkeys as they struck out for the bank, raising a wave like small torpedo boats. At other times two would break loose and fight, screaming and standing up, or rushing in, seize one another by the necks like bulldogs, when their respective negroes dodged outside, like forward players in a football scrimmage waiting for the ball, trying to catch their ropes but afraid to venture in between them. Generally the fight was ended by an Arab or a Berber rushing up armed with a thick stick and a handful of round stones, with which he beat and pelted them till they let go their hold. Others again would break loose all alone, and career about the sandy beach, head and tail up, or gallop through the corn, their attendant running after them in agony till they were captured. The most sedate walked delicately as they were Agags down to the water, plunged their muzzles deep into the stream and drank as if they wished to drain the river dry, looked up and drank again three times, then turned, and after executing several perfunctory bounds, lay down and rolled in the wet sand and quietly walked home beside their negro, not deigning even to look at any other horse, then disappeared under the horseshoe gateway to the inner courtyard where they lived. The mules were not so interesting, though valuable, fetching more money than the best horse, and if accomplished “pacers,” often bringing two or three hundred dollars, whereas a horse rarely exceeds a hundred and fifty at the most; but still they have an air as of a donkey, which makes them quite uninteresting, for they are lacking in the donkey’s inner grace.
In districts like the Atlas mules are more serviceable than any horse, and on the mountain roads will perform almost a third longer journey in a day. Where the horse beats them is on the plain, for no mule can live beside a horse at the horse’s pace, though on a rough road the mule’s pace is much the faster of the two. Sometimes five or six mules would break loose and follow one another in a string, jumping the thorny fences heavily, their ears flapping about ridiculously, and their thin tails stuck high up in the air. They never swam, and, on the whole, had I been limited to mules exclusively, I could not have passed my time so well. One horse especially interested me, a large creamy-white animal with an immense and curly mane; he always came alone, led by two negroes, and had an open wound upon his head and two upon his chest. I learned he was the Kaid’s special favourite, and that about a month ago, during an expedition to the Sus to aid the Sultan against a refractory tribe, the Kaid had received a bullet in the leg, and the horse had got his wounds at the same time. None of the horses that I saw would be of any value, except to an artist, in the European market; but for the country where they were bred they were most serviceable, hardy, and indefatigable, sober beyond belief, eating their corn but once a day, drinking but once, and up to any weight, and if not quite so fast as might be wished for, still a glory to the eye.
The horses gone, the entertainment of the day was over, and I got quite accustomed to expect them at a certain hour, and to be quite annoyed if they were late.
Thus did one day tell and certify another, leaving us quite cut off from all the world, as far removed from European influence as we had been in the centre of the Sahara; well treated, but uncertain of how long we should be kept in honourable captivity, growing more anxious every moment, and yet with something comic in the situation; nothing to do but make the best of it, eat, drink, and sleep, and stroll about, talk with the natives, sit in our tent, and read el Faredi, giving ourselves up with the best grace we could, to watching and to prayer.
