The 24th still found us, so to speak, in Poste Restante at Kintafi, the Kaid invisible, tobacco running low, food not too regular, and our animals becoming thinner every day. Still the example of the prisoners, the Sheikhs from Sus, and a tent full of miserable tribesmen, all almost without food, and glad to eat our scraps, kept us for shame’s sake patient. So we talked much to everyone, especially with the negro who had been in London, and found he was a man of much and varied travel, some experience, no little observation, and ready to talk all day on all that he had seen. London had not impressed him, or else impressed him to such purpose that he was dumb about it; but of the Fetish worshippers below the Senegal he could tell much. In speaking of them, though a negro of the blackest dye, he treated them as savages, being a Mohammedan, and laughed at their religion, although the most foolish portions of it seemed to appeal to his imagination, in the same way that negroes in America (all Christians, of course), are seldom pleased with moderate Christianity, but usually are Ranters, Bush Baptists, or members of some saltatory sect, which gives them opportunity to enter more fully into communion with the spirit of the thing than if they sat and listened to a prayer, slept at a sermon, or dropped their money in the plate, merely conforming in a perfunctory way, as their less animistic lower-toned brethren in the Lord seem quite content to do.Fetish, our friend explained, is good, and works great deeds; sometimes a man will die, and then the Fetish man appears and cuts off a cow’s tail, fastens it on the dead man’s forehead, who at once gets up and walks to where he wishes to be buried, and dies again. Why he does this the speaker did not know, or why, before he dies, the man does not explain in the usual way to his friends where he wants them to lay him after death. Nor did he know what good the fetish man receives by his operation, or if the tail should be taken from a dead or living cow; but he was certain that he had seen a miracle, and told us plainly that he never was so certain of anything before. Fetish to him seemed rather an incident than a religion, for he went on to say the heathen negroes have no God, just like the Christians; and then turned grey, which, I think, is the negro way to blush, and said, he did not point his observation at ourselves, for he had heard in London that we worshipped several Gods, and that the Christians he referred to were the people in the Canaries, who, he was positive, worshipped a goddess, for he had seen them do so in a Mosque. Again he said his head was full of news, but his purse still continued light, and so he drew it out and showed it to us, and it was empty certainly; but beautifully made, of a most curious pattern and workmanship, and cunningly contrived of pieces of thin leather which all fitted into one another and drew out, after the fashion of those painted boxes which used to come from India, which in one’s childhood when one opened them, one always found another underneath. It appears he has been often in the Canaries, and knows the islands, as Lanzarote which he denominates “Charuta,” Fuerteventura which becomes “Fortinvantora,” and Grand Canary, where he saw one Christian kill another with a knife.
In form he was almost perfect as a type of race; blacker than shale, with yellowish teeth like fangs, nostrils as wide as a small donkey’s, huge ears like a young elephant’s, and bloodshot eyes, thin, spindle legs, and all his body covered with old scars; for he had been in many wars, “shoots,” as he said “plum center”; rides well, and to crown all had feet about the size and shape of a cigar box, stuck at right angles to his legs, so when he walked he looked like a flamingo, or a heron in a swamp. Knowing by actual handling the exiguity of his purse, I approached the negro to try if he would carry letters for me to the outside world. But after having bargained for five dollars, a sudden panic took him, and he refused, and ever after during our stay avoided us, although I did not hear that he informed the Kaid or any of his men.
All the day long a constant string of people kept arriving at the castle gate. Little brown sturdy-legged Berber tribesmen, armed with long quarter-staffs, dressed in their dark “achnifs,” barefooted and bareheaded, save for a string of camel’s hair bound round the forehead; small-eyed, and strangely autochthonous in type, as if they and the stones upon the hills had sprung into existence long before history. Small caravans of donkeys carrying Indian corn, with fruit, with almonds, and with meat entered the gate full laden, and came out empty. Negresses walked down the hill tracks, bending beneath the weight of immense loads of brushwood, or of grass, or the green leaves of Indian corn or sorgum, [173] to feed the horses, and to heat the ovens of the Kaid.
I found that, though the Kaid oppressed and plundered all the district, his oppression was in a measure balanced by his charity, for he fed all the poor people of the valley, and dispensed his hospitality to all and sundry who passed his gates. So that, take it for all in all, his tyranny was only different in degree from that of the manufacturer in the manufacturing towns of England, who lives upon the toil of several thousand workmen, discharges no one useful function to the State, his works being run by paid officials, and he himself doing nothing but sign his letters, whilst he uses the money wrung from his workmen to engage in foreign speculations, to swindle the inhabitants of distant countries; and for all charity subscribes to missions to convert the Jews, or to send meddling praters to insult good Catholics in Spain.
The Kaid, Si Taib el Kintafi, lives like a veritable prince, is almost independent of the Sultan, and reminds me of a Mohammedan Emir in Spain after the Caliphate of Cordoba broke up. These Emirs were called by the Spaniards Reyezuelos de Taifas, [174a] that is, Kings of a Section, or Hedge Kings; they had their courts in Jaen, in Malaga, in Almeria, [174b] and in the South of Portugal. But in especial it recalled Jaen, being situated amongst the mountains, as that kingdom was with towering Atalayas (watch-towers) on every hill, and the Kaid’s palace in the centre of the land. Guards were on every road patrolling within sight of one another. About five hundred negro slaves were scattered in the various castles. The Kaid kept all his money in iron boxes underground, and all his wives were guarded by gentlemen of the third sex, [174c] so that the parallel between Kintafi and Jaen was almost perfect. For enemies he had the Sultan and every other Kaid of equal strength, but the impenetrable nature of his territory made him almost impregnable, and the armed soldiery, who lounged about in numbers round the castle and at every fort, made him secure as long as he could pay their services. The difference between a Spanish-Moorish mountain State and the Taifa of Kintafi was (though not apparent in externals, in policy, and in ideals of government), in other matters, very striking, for in the smallest Moorish Courts of Spain arts, sciences, literature, and general culture all flourished, and were encouraged by the kings.
Poets, musicians, doctors, and men of science flocked to the capitals; both Almeria and Malaga were centres of culture, and the works of many writers who flourished in those cities still survive. But in Kintafi all was in decadence; for music, only a little thrumming on the gimbri, [175] beating of tom-toms, an occasional song sung to the lute, and the shrill music of the Moorish pipe known as the Ghaita, and which survives in parts of Spain under the name of Dulzaina. In both countries it is always accompanied by a small hand-drum.
Literature, in the modern Moorish State, is confined but to the Koran, the sacred books, an occasional Arab poet, and the study of the one book known to be written in the Berber tongue, and called El Maziri, which deals exclusively with the ceremonial of the faith. Strange that a people like the Moors, still brave, so fine in type, ardent in faith, sober in habit, and apparently (if history lie not more than usually) so like to what they were externally, when they shook Europe, should have fallen into such absolute decay. Literature, art, science, everything is forgotten; architecture but a base copy of their older styles, though still not so degraded as our own; bad government cries aloud in every town, on every road corruption runs rampant, and still the people, as mere men, are infinitely superior to any race in Europe I have seen; patient, and bearing hunger and oppression with a patience to put a saint to shame, and yet incapable of striking a blow to free themselves from the base tyranny which all must see and feel.
No man in all Morocco to rise and say, as the Sheikhs said to Omar when he asked if any one had a complaint against him: “By Allah, if we had had cause of complaint against thee, we had redressed it with our swords.” And still, in spite of decadence, I never met a Moor who knew anything of our European life and institutions, except, of course, the servant class and a few men in place, and money-lenders, who wished to change their decadence for our prosperity upon the terms of bowing to a foreign race. They know that to the individual man, with all its faults, their life is happier than ours—somehow they feel instinctively that when we talk of freedom, liberty, and of good government, these mean freedom, good government and liberty for ourselves, and that they, by submitting, would become slaves, receiving nothing in return. Still they accept our gin, our teas, our powder, and in general, all the good things which Europe sends them, with civility; but decline to see that we, for all our talk, are any better than themselves. Baulked of our negro, I cast about to find some other stranger willing to earn a dishonest penny by carrying letters for the prisoners of the Kaid. After much talking and long negotiation overnight, a man made up his mind to venture to Morocco city, a journey of about three days, for the magnificent guerdon of four dollars, one dollar to be paid at once, and the other three upon arrival, either at Mr. Nairn’s, the missionary’s, house, or that of Si Bu Bekr, a well-known merchant, and for a long time British Agent in the town, or at the house of the Sherif of Tamasluoght, a protected British subject, whose Zowia is about ten miles outside the town.
The letters duly written, with much care and secrecy, some to our friends, others to consuls, one to the British Minister in Tangier, and two [177] to newspapers, were wrapped up carefully in a piece of strong French packing paper, tied round with a palmetto cord, and given to the man, who crawled up to the tent door at dead of night, whilst we sat waiting for him like conspirators. At the last moment, he demanded “one more dollar in the hand,” dwelling upon the risks he ran, and which, indeed, were great. Not being prepared to bargain at such a time, I put the dollar in his hand, and bade him go with God, telling Mohammed-el-Hosein to explain in Berber all that he should do. They seemed to talk for hours, though I suppose it was not really long, and after having received instructions, minute enough to confuse a lawyer, he slipped away, crawling along the ground (his single long white garment looking like a shroud), until he reached a bank beside the mill stream, over which he dropped.
We sat late, talking over our tea, smoked the last of our tobacco, and calculated how long it would take to get an answer, if all went well, and if our messenger escaped the perils of the road. Mohammed-el-Hosein thought in five days, if in the interim it did not rain, and the rivers rise, we might have word, “for,” he said, “when the man arrives, either the missionary or Bu Bekr, or both, will send off messengers both to the Consul, to the Sultan, and another to the Kaid to tell him where we are. The messengers,” he said, “having their own spurs and other people’s horses, will not spare either, so that upon the evening of the fifth day we shall hear, Inshallah, if all goes well.”All the night long we slept but little, fearing to hear shots and see our guide brought back escorted by a guard, but all passed quietly, and we congratulated ourselves on his escape, as we knew well the first ten miles of the road would be most difficult for him to pass.
Next morning we kept wondering, like children, how far our messenger had got upon the road, and trying to encourage one another by talking of the tremendous distance an Arab “rekass” could go when pushed to exert himself by fear or gain. The stories grew as the morning passed, until at last from eighty to a hundred miles seemed quite an ordinary trot. Privately, I thought the thick-legged mountaineer did not look like a record breaker, but I kept my opinion to myself, and let my followers yarn, seeing that it relieved their hearts. By this time, Mohammed-el-Hosein had ventured back from his refuge with the Sherif from Sus, and was quite sure that the Kaid had sent a messenger off to the Sultan, for, on the morning after we were captured, a “rekass” was seen to strike across the hills. The Chamberlain, [178] Si Mohammed, honoured us with a visit, wrapped up in fleecy, voluminous white clothes, new yellow shoes, beard dyed with henna, finger nails turned orange with the same substance, and followed by two stalwart, well-armed mountaineers, who strode behind him as he waddled to our tent. After due compliments and salutations, he officially informed us that the Kaid was wounded, and could not see us for a day or two. Though we knew this before, to show good manners, we pretended great astonishment, asked who could have dared to wound so good a prince, where it had happened, and as to seeing us, begged he would use his pleasure in the matter, though, of course, we counted every minute, till we should see his face. The Chamberlain, as excellent a diplomatist as could be wished for, said he was glad to see us in such spirits, for he had thought by my expression on the first day, that I was irritated with his lord, the Kaid, who had detained us (as he now said) merely to save our lives, as, had we crossed into the Sus, the “Illegitimate Ones” (Oulad el Haram) would have slain us, not for Christians, “for,” said the Chamberlain, looking at me with a slight smile, “you wear our clothes as if you had been born amongst the Arabs,” but as strangers, for God had made their hearts like stone to all they did not know. The conversation languished till he startled me by asking if I was a Moskou, which at first I did not comprehend, and thought he meant to ask me of what sect I was. Just as I had instructed Lutaif to inform him I was a member of the U.P. [179a] Church, and was as orthodox [179b] a Christian as he was a Mohammedan, it dawned upon me that he meant to ask me if I was a Russian, and might have said I was one, had I not feared to bring about a diplomatic question of some sort. Our guns against the tent-pole next struck his eye. Mine was a double-barrelled gun lent by the British Consul in Mogador. Lutaif’s, a single barrelled, Spanish gun, made in Barcelona, and so light upon the trigger, that on the only occasion he tried to fire with it, it started before he was expecting it, and the whole charge passed close to the head of an old negro on a donkey passing along the road. The negro did not turn a hair, but was just starting to abuse Lutaif, when, in my capacity of a Sherif, I rode up and cursed him for a dog for getting between the gun and the partridge Lutaif was firing at. This made things right, and the poor man rode on with many apologies for having frightened us. The Chamberlain examined the two weapons, and asked leave to show them to the Kaid, and, before we had time to answer, motioned to one of his attendants to take them off. I sat as solid as a rock, and said it was not usual to deprive a guest of his gun without consent, whereupon the Chamberlain poured out a torrent of excuses, and said the Kaid had now determined not to hurt a hair of any of our heads, and only wanted to see the guns from curiosity. Seeing the turn events were taking, I tried to get the Chamberlain to say if a “rekass” had been sent off to the Sultan or not, and if it was not possible for him to use his influence (for a consideration) to enable us to go on to the Sus.
Tipping through the East is understood to the full as well as it is understood in England, and his eyes glistened at the word “consideration,” but with an effort he replied, as far as he knew no messenger had gone, and, as to going to the Sus, had he not told us of the Sons of Belial who in that land cared for men’s lives as little as an ordinary man cared about killing lice? After some tea and a surreptitious cigarette which I found in the corner of my saddlebag, and which to make him smoke we had to close the tent, so that no one should see him “drink the shameful,” he departed, telling us to be of good cheer and we should soon be honoured by an interview with his liege lord the Kaid. As he departed I responded to his compliments ceremoniously in English, devoting his liege lord to all the devils mentioned in the Talmud, Cabala, Apocalypse, and other works upon theology which treat of angels, devils, and like works of human ingenuity. Lutaif almost exploded, and even Swani, who knew a little expletive English, seemed amused.
After the interview we walked up the river and sat down underneath an algarroba tree, to watch thirty or forty people, men, children, and women, more or less carelessly veiled (for in this matter Berbers are much less strict than Arabs), all cracking almonds in a long open shed.
Almonds are one of the staple articles of trade in the Atlas Mountains. Long trains of mules, during the autumn, convey them to Morocco city; from thence they go to Mogador and are shipped off to Europe, “though what you Christians do with such a quantity of almonds we do not know.” I took especial care not to enquire the price per bag, or ton, or box, they sell at; how many qualities there are; when they are ripe; how they are picked, sorted, or anything of that fatiguing nature, knowing how much I had disliked that kind of thing in books of travel I have read. Is not all that set forth in Consular Reports, in Blue Books, and the like, and who am I, by means of information got meanly at first hand, to “blackleg,” so to speak, upon a British Consul, or to “springe cockle in his cleene corne” with unofficial and uncalled details which would not bring me in a cent?
Lutaif, and I, the Sherif from Sus, and the Persian, sat under a walnut grove for several hours, reading el Faredi, trying to learn the Berber tongue, talking of things and others, and I began at last to understand the lives passed by the Greek philosophers, who no doubt wandered up and down talking of things they did not understand, dozing beneath the trees, and weaving theories about First Causes, Atoms, Evolution, the Nature of the Gods, Schemes of Creation, and other mental exercises, at least as interesting as essays upon View of Frank Pledge (Visus de Francopledgii), Courts of Attachment, Swanimote, or any of the Judgments or the Entries of the Assizes of the Forest, either of Pickering or Lancaster.
Much did the Sherif enquire about the “Chimin di fer”—how it was made, how fast it went and why, and if men sat upon it (as he had heard) and worked it with their legs. I told him all I knew (and more), and about bicycles and women’s rights; gave a brief digest of our common law and current theology, tried to explain our parliamentary system, the Stock Exchange, our commerce, glory, whisky, and the like; told him of London’s streets at night, our churches, chapels, underground railways, tramways, telephones, electric light, and other trifles of our pomp and state which might be interesting. His observations were few but pertinent, and certainly, upon occasions, hard to answer out of hand. The bicycle, the Persian kindly corroborated; the telephone, Lutaif explained; a railway underground was no more wonderful than one upon the surface of the earth; our parliament seemed foolish to him, and he could not understand how one man could represent another, still less ten thousand men; the Stock Exchange he summed up briefly as a fraud, remarking, “How can they sell that which they have not got?” but he reserved his chiefest comment for more simple things. “Whose are those wives,” he said, “who walk your streets? I thought you Christians were monogamists. Do you not keep the law you follow then, or are there not sufficient husbands for the women, or are your women bad by nature; and how is it your Cadis tolerate such things?” I told him, courteous reader, just what you would have said in my position; confessed our faith in strict monogamy, but said the flesh was weak; that even amongst ourselves the Oulad-el-Haram were a large tribe; that all worked towards perfection, and no doubt, some day, things would improve. He quite courteously rejoined, “Yes, yes, I see, you Christians are like us; that is, your faith is stronger than your deeds; well, even with us there are some men who read the Koran, and yet forget to follow all it says.”
I dropped the conversation and urged the old Persian on to talk about himself; to tell of Persia, Turkey, the Sahara, and the Oasis of Tindoof, which he described by smoothing his hand upon the sand to show the flatness of it, and then said “Tindoof walou,” that is, in Tindoof, nothing; though he confessed it is the mouth of Timbuctoo. In the same way Canada is said to have got its name from the two Spanish words “Aca” and “Nada,” as signifying “there is nothing here.” “Baris,” [183] he said was beautiful, the houris as the houris in paradise, but more expensive; and he detailed with great astonishment that once on entering a “cabinet” (presumably inodore) he had to pay a franc on coming out. And still he dwelt upon our hardness towards our co-religionists, and said, “Amongst you, look how many starve; here they may kill us, or throw us into prison, mutilate us, put out our eyes (these things are all against the Koran, as your women on the streets are clean against the teachings of your Book), but who can say a poor Mohammedan was ever known to starve? Look at me here,” he said, “I came walking along the road carrying my broken fiddle, not cursing God, after the fashion of the Christians, for my bad luck, but praying at the Saint’s tomb, leading the prayer in wayside mosques, calling to prayers when asked, maintained by all, till I arrived at this place and was received by the great Kaid with favour, given food and clothes and twenty dollars, [184] and fell into the disgrace in which you see me by my own act.”
Though I knew of the Kaid’s face being averted from him, and that he was about once more to take his fiddle up and walk, I had, out of politeness, to pretend my ignorance, and then he spoke.
“Yes, I was well received, and nightly the Kaid would send for me, and I discoursed to him of Persia, Turkey, and other countries which I had seen, and also of El Hind and China which I have not visited, but trust to visit before I call myself a traveller, and all went well and others envied me. Till, on a night, puffed up with pride, I let my tongue escape. Unruly member! (Here he drew it out and held it, like a slippery fish, between his finger and his thumb.) With it I told the Kaid that he might be as a great Sultan, but that I was greater, for was not I a Sultan of the mind? and since that time I have not stood once in the presence, and shortly I shall leave this place without a friend unless it be that you and this same noble Syrian, who speaks for you, can be counted in the number of the men who wish me well.”
He ceased and I determined later on to take the hint, and fell awatching a small brown tree-creeper, not larger than a wren, which ran along the branches of a walnut-tree, and put its head upon one side and looked at us as it had been a fashionable philosopher, and no doubt just as wise. The grove of walnuts, sound of the running stream, at which a large grey squirrel sat and drank, noise of the wind amongst the leaves, the distant glimpses of the snow-capped hills, the long sustained notes of the negroes singing in the fields, set me athinking upon some not impossible Almighty Power, a harmony in things, a not altogether improbable design in nature, and, in fact, embarked me on the train of thought which the deep-thinking author of the libretto of “GiroflÉe et Girofla” has typified as thoughts about “de l’eau, de l’amour, des roses,” etc., when the irruption of a scabby-headed boy summoned me back to earth.
He (the scabby-headed one) had heard I was a doctor of some repute, and had cured divers folks, as, indeed, I think I had, or at least medicined them out of self-conceit, and came to ask my help for the affliction which had come upon his head. Taking rather a hasty look, I almost had prescribed washing and an ointment with some butter mixed with sulphur, when I bethought me what was expected of a doctor in the country where we lived. So, after thinking carefully for a little space, I said, “This requires thought, come to the tent in two hours’ time (three hours were better), and I hope by then to have thought out, Inshallah, a fit medicine for your case.” Duly interpreted into Berber this satisfied him, and he promised to comply. Our tertulia [185] then dispersed, and we went back to sleep inside the tent, or resting on our rugs, to watch the constant passing stream of white or brown-dressed, bare-footed figures that, in Morocco, is always to be seen passing upon every road.
Considering that, in the Romans’ time, Pliny, quoting from the lost journal of Suetonius Paulinus, informs us that the Atlas Mountains were full of elephants, and swarmed with wild beasts of every kind, who took refuge in the impenetrable forests with which those mountains then were clad, it is strange to find the Atlas of to-day so largely a treeless and a gameless land. True, that much later than the Roman times, the white wild cattle, now confined to Cadzow, Chillingham, and Lyme, roamed through the glades of Epping Forest, where to-day nothing more fearful than sandwich paper, or a broken bottle, makes afraid the explorer, and that wolves and wild boars were common till almost modern times with us. The destruction of the forests can be accounted for by the constant burning for pasturage, and with the forests much of the game would go, but why, besides large animals, there should be a dearth of birds, I do not know. With the exception of a hawk or two, pigeons and partridges, the lesser bustard, the little tree-creeper, before referred to, a species of grey wagtails, and a reddish-brown sparrow, I hardly saw a bird. The ibises that follow cattle, the wild ducks, water birds, the greater bustard, herons and large hawks, all so common in the plains, are here conspicuous by their absence. I saw no storks, [186] and I believe they rarely come so high into the mountains as Kintafi, though in the plains no Arab hut so small as not to have its nest, with its two storks chattering all day, quite as persistently, and as far as I can see, to quite as little purpose as do members of the Imperial Parliament.
As regards animals—hyenas, foxes, jackals, wild boars, moufflons, porcupines, grey squirrels, small hares, and rabbits in considerable numbers, are to be found, with a few wild cats, and now and then a panther; lions are unknown, except in the great cedar forests of the Beni M’Gild to the north of Fez. In many parts of the plain country of Morocco the animals above referred to (except the lion), but with the addition of the gazelle, are numerous, but in the Atlas Mountains, at least about Kintafi, they are scarce and hard to find. In the plains sand grouse and several kinds of plovers are frequent, but I never saw them in the hills. Certainly both in the mountains and the plains all men have guns, and some of them shoot well; but though they shoot partridges, ducks, and pigeons in the plains, and in the mountains hunt the moufflon, and the wild boar and porcupine, I never saw an Arab or a Berber fire at a small bird; so that they cannot have been all destroyed, as is the case in certain parts of Europe, by the efforts of the “Sontags Jaeger” and his twenty-five mark gun. Curious idea that known as “sport,” and perhaps liable, as much as anything, for the degradation of mankind. Witness the Roman show of gladiators, the Spanish bull fight, and the English pheasant butchery, where keepers wring the necks of dozens of tame birds to swell the bag which has to figure in the newspapers, so that the astonished public recollect Lord A. or Mr. B. is still alive.
One thing is certain in Morocco, and that is, that the domestic animals and man understand one another better than they do in any other country I have seen. It may be that it is because in the East the animals, now become so terribly mechanical in Europe, were first domesticated. It may be that the peaceful life gives time for men and animals to make each other out. It may be that the monstrous cart horses, greyhound-like thoroughbreds, ridiculously cropped and docked hunters, and capitalistic looking carriage horses, with the whole Noah’s Ark of beef producing, milk secreting, wool growing missing link between the animal creation and the machine world, which we see in the fat “streaky bacon” pigs, disgusting short horns, and improved sheep with backs like boxes, feel their degradation, and hate us for imposing it upon them and their race. No one can say it is because the intellect of biped and of quadruped is nearer in degree than it is in Europe, for between the Arab tribesmen and the English or Scottish countrymen, the balance certainly is not in favour of the northerner, if abstract power of mind apart from education is to be the test. What makes a flock of sheep follow an Arab, and have to be driven by a European, I do not know. Why, if an Arab buys a kid, in a few days it follows him about, I cannot tell, but there is nothing commoner than to see Arabs walking on the roads with curly black-woolled lambs and goats walking along beside them, as only dogs, of all the animals, will do with us.
Curiously enough, in South America, where animals of every kind are much more plentiful than in the East, they are not on the same familiar terms with man.
Who ever saw a lamb follow a Gaucho, Texan, Mexican, or any man of any of the countries where sheep abound in millions, such as Australia or New Zealand? I do not say that in Morocco animals are greatly better treated than with us, though on the whole I think perhaps the scale inclines against ourselves, but still there is community of feeling which I have never seen in any other land. Sometimes this same community makes the tragedy of animal life even more hard to understand, as when a man is followed by a lamb or kid up to the butcher, and stands and sees the thing which followed him so happily have its throat cut before his face, sees its eyes glaze, and its hot blood pour out upon the sand, pockets his half-dollar, and walks serenely home, after a pious exclamation about “One God”; as if God, either in one or three, could possibly be pleased to see one of his own created creatures so betray another only because it walked upon four legs. However, let “the One” (El Uahed) be pleased or not, no section of his clergy throughout Europe have said one word in favour of good treatment of their brother animals. Popes and Archbishops of Canterbury, of Paris, York, Toledo, and the rest, are dumber than dumb dogs, fearing to offend, fearing, it may be, that the animals have souls, or daring not to speak for fear of the stronger brethren; for when did priest, tub-thumper, bishop, Pope, or minister of any sect, take thought about the feelings of the brethren who are weak?
My scabby-headed patient turned up towards evening, and sat expectant in the door of the tent. After some thought, I told him to rise exactly one hour before the Feyzer, and get water from a stream (not from a well on any account), then put it in a vessel and pray exactly as the Muezzin called to prayer, then to walk backwards round an olive tree three times; every third day for twice nine days, to avoid all food cooked with Argan oil; finally, to wash his head well every day with soap, then to rub in butter mixed with sulphur, and then, if God so willed it, he would be well. A Seidlitz powder which he drank at once, and said there was “a spirit in the water,” [189] and nine Beecham’s Pills to be taken alternately upon the third, the seventh, and the ninth day till they were finished, sent him away rejoicing, and laid my fame for ever as a first-class “tabib.”
We now began to think how far our messenger had got, and were discussing how great the astonishment of the few Europeans in Morocco city would be on hearing of our fate, when the tent door was lifted and our messenger walked in, and silently laid the packet and the two dollars at my feet. Had a volcano opened upon the neighbouring hill I could not have been more surprised, and for a moment no one spoke, so much had we counted on the letters being well upon their way.Swani first broke the silence with a string of imprecations on the unlucky messenger’s female relations whom he defiled, gave up to Kaffirs, compared to hens, cows, goats, and finished up by telling the poor man he evidently was born of a family the women of which were shameless, veilless, and as hideous in their persons as their characters were vile. The poor man sat quite patiently, and then replied it was no use to curse him, his heart had failed, and that he feared if he were found out the Kaid would kill him, burn his house, and throw his children into prison to rot and die. Though I was much annoyed, I was sorry for him, as one is always sorry for all those whose hearts fail at the wrong minute, and I was touched that he had brought me the two dollars back. Most likely in his life he had never seen himself at the head of so much capital, and it would have been easy for him to throw away the packet and not return. Therefore I handed him a dollar, and remarked, those who have families should not engage in enterprises such as these; God loves stout-hearted men, but perhaps loves quite as much fathers who love their children, but, children or no children, we are all in his hand. This, though they had heard it a million times, seemed to console all present, and the messenger slunk from the tent ashamed, but happy, having been paid on a scale he thought was lavish for a mere twenty-two hours’ walk. [190] Certainly when he went we were cast down, for it appeared impossible to get a letter safely conveyed, so we agreed next morning to saddle up our animals and see if the Kaid would allow us to return, thinking, perhaps, his injunctions only lay upon the road towards the Sus. This settled, Lutaif and I walked long backwards and forwards on the Maidan, in the clear moonlight, and heard the long-drawn, quavering notes of a wild song like a MalagueÑa rise in the still night air, wayward and strange in interval, sung in a high falsetto voice, and yet enthralling and penetrating to the marrow of the bones; once heard, haunting one’s memory for ever afterwards, and still almost impossible to catch; but it recalls Kintafi to me as I write, just as the scent of fresh-cut oranges brings me back to Paraguay, so that perhaps perfumes and sounds are after all the most stable of the illusions amongst which we live.
