Once through the olive groves of Tamasluoght, the city of Yusuf-ibn-Tachfin [263] lay glistening on the plain, almost hull down on the horizon. Above the forests of tall date palms which fringe the town, the tall mosque towers rose, the Kutubieh and the minaret of Sidi Bel Abbas high above the rest. From the green gardens of the Aguedal the enormous stone-built pile of the Sultan’s palace, all ornamented with fine marbles brought from Italy and Spain, towered like a desert-built Gibraltar over the level plain. Across the sea-like surface of the steppe long trains of camels, mules, and men on foot crawled, looking like streams of ants converging on a giant ant-hill, whilst in the distance the huge wall-like Atlas towering up, walled the flat country in, as the volcanoes seem to cut off Mexico from the world outside. The situation of Morocco city much resembles that of Mexico, which has a pseudo-Oriental look, the flat-roofed houses and the palm trees completing the effect.
A hot three hours, kicking our tired beasts along, brought us outside the city walls, and passing underneath the gate, which zig-zags like an old Scottish bridge, we emerged into the sandy lanes running between orange gardens, which form a kind of suburb of the town, and where the Soudanese, the men from Draa and the Wad Nun, do mostly congregate. No one would ever think, from the aspect of the lanes, unpaved and broken into holes by winter rains, that he was actually inside a city which is supposed to cover almost as much ground as Paris. It took us almost three-quarters of an hour to ride from the outside walls to the centre of the town. We passed through narrow lanes where camels jammed us almost to the wall; along the foot-paths beggars sat and showed their sores; dogs, yellow, ulcerous and wild as jackals, skulked between our horses’ legs. At last we came out on an open space under the tower of the Kutubieh, in which square a sort of market was in progress, and a ring of interested spectators sat, crouched, and stood, intent upon a story-teller’s tale. I sat a moment listening on my horse, and heard enough to learn the story was after the style of the Arabian Nights, but quite unbowdlerised and suitable for Oriental taste.
A certain prince admired a beauteous dame, but an old Sultan (always the wicked baronet of Eastern tales) desired her for his harem, and engaged a certain witch, of whom there were great store throughout his territory, to cast a spell upon the prince, so that the lady should fall into a dislike of him. He, on his part, resorted to a wizard who stirred the ladies of the Sultan’s harem up to play strange pranks and turn the palace upside down, let young men in o’nights, stay out themselves too late, and generally comport themselves in a discreditable way. A faithful slave at last made all things right, and after a most realistic love scene the prince and princess were married and lived happy ever after; or, as the story-teller, a sad moralising wag, remarked, until the prince should take another wife. Humanity, when crushed together in the heat, either in London ball-rooms or in waste places in Morocco city, sends up a perfume which makes one regret that the cynical contriver of the world endowed us with a nose. Therefore I waited but a little and rode on, turning occasionally to take a look at the great mosque and the tall dusty tower. The outside of the mosque, the name of which in Arabic means Mosque of the Books, from the word Kitab, a book, is not imposing. What it is inside I believe no Christian knows. Had I that moment, dressed as I was, sunburned and dirty, got off and entered it, I might have seen, but the thought did not cross my mind, and afterwards, when known for a European, it might have cost my life. The tower springs straight from the sandy square as the Giralda rises from the level of the street in Seville. One man built both, so runs tradition, and certainly the Kutubieh tower to-day reminds one greatly of the description of the Giralda when San Fernando drove out the Moorish king of Seville, and planted the banner with the Castles of Castille above the town. The same gilt globes, of which the Spanish speak, are on the Moorish tower, and the same little cupola which the Christians took away in Seville, replacing it by a renaissance “fleche,” upon which stands the towering figure cast by BartolomÉ Morel. The tower, almost three hundred feet in height, is built of dark-red stone, with the alternating raised and sunk patterns (called in Spanish Ajaracas) cut deeply or standing boldly out from the solid masonry. At one time tile work filled most of the patterns, or was embroidered round the edges of the windows, but neglect and time have made most of it drop away. Still, just below the parapet runs a broad band, which from the square appears to be full four feet broad, of the most wonderful black and green hidescent tiles I ever saw. When Fabir, who, tradition says, built it for the Sultan El Mansur, and it stood glorious, adorned with tiles like those which still remain, the gilding fresh upon the great brass balls, even the mosque at Cordoba itself could not have been more glorious, and El Mansur could not have easily foreseen that on his lonely tomb under the palm trees, beside the river at Rabat, goats would browse and shepherds play their pipes. Allah, Jehovah, all the Gods are alike unmindful of their worshippers, who made and gave them fame; what more may the contrivers of the Crystal Palace and the gasometers at Battersea expect, when they have had their day? Medina, Mellah, Kaiserieh, Sidi Bel Abbas, the tomb of Mulai Abdul Azis, all have been described so many times and by such serious and painstaking writers, who have apparently measured, re-measured, and calculated the cubic capacity of every building in Morocco city, that it would have been a work of supererogation on my part to have laid a measuring tape once more on any of them.
Morocco city struck me, and has always done so, for I have been there twice, as the best example of a purely African city I have seen. Fez has the mixture of Spanish blood in its inhabitants which the expulsed from Malaga, Granada, and from all the Andalos, brought and disseminated. In the high houses, which make the streets like sewers to walk in, you hear men play the lute, and women sing the MalagueÑa, CaÑa and the RondeÑa as in mountain towns in Spain. Quite half the population have fair hair, some pale blue eyes, and their fanaticism is born of ancient persecution by the fanatic Christians of Spain. In every house, in every mosque, in almost every saint’s tomb is fine tile work, stone and wood carving, the eaves especially being often as richly decorated as they had been Venetian and not African. The streets are thronged, men move quickly through them and the whole place is redolent of aristocracy, of a great religious class, in fact has all the air of what in Europe we call a capital.
Morocco city is purely African, negroes abound; the streets are never full, even in the kaiserieh [267] you can make your way about. With the exception of the Kutubieh Tower, and some fine fountains, notably that with the inscription “Drink and admire” (Shrab-u-Schuf) inscribed upon it, and the fine gate of the Kasbah of the best period of Moorish work, there is no architecture. Sand, sand, and more sand in almost every street, in the vast open spaces, in the long winding narrow lanes, outside the walls up to the city gates; sand in your hair, your clothes, the coats of animals. Streets, streets, and still more streets of houses in decay. Yellow adobe walls, dazzling white roofs and dense metallic semi-tropical vegetation shrouding the heaps of yellowish decaying masonry. No noise, the footfalls of the mules and camels falling into the sand as rain falls into the sea, with a soft swishing sound.
The people all are African, men from the Draa, the Sus, the Sahara, Wad Nun and the mysterious sandy steppes below Cape Bojador. Arabs are quite in the minority, and the fine types and full grey beards of aged Sheikhs one sees so frequently in Fez exchanged for the spare Saharowi type, or the shaved lip and cheeks and pointed chin tufts of the Berber race. Tom-tom and gimbry are their chief instruments, together with the Moorish flute, ear-piercing and encouraging to horses, who when they hear its shriek, step proudly, arching their necks and moving sideways down the streets as if they liked the sound. Their songs are African, the interval so strange, and the rhythm so unlike that of all European music, as at first hearing to be almost unintelligible; but which at last grow on one until one likes them and endeavours to repeat their tunes. Hardly an aristocratic family lives in the place, and few Sherifs, the richer of the population being traders with the Sahara.
A city of vast distances, immense perspectives, great desolate squares, of gardens miles in length, a place in which you want a mule to ride about, for to attempt to labour through the sand on foot would be a purgatory. And yet a place which grows upon you, the sound of water ever in your ears, the narrow streets arched over all with grape vines; mouth of the Sahara, city of Yusuf-ibn-Tachfin, town circled in with mountains, plain girt, sun beaten, wind swept, ruinous, wearisome, and mournful in the sad sunlight which enshrouds its mouldering walls.
Fez and Rabat, Sefrou, Salee and Mogador with Tetuan, Larache, Dar-el-Baida and the rest may have more trade, more art, more beauty, population, importance, industry, rank, faith, architecture, or what you will; but none of them enter into your soul as does this heap of ruins, this sandheap, desert town, metropolis of the fantastic world which stretches from its walls across the mountains through the oases of the Sahara; and which for aught I know may some day have its railway station, public houses, Salvation Army barracks, and its people have their eyes opened, as were those of Adam and of Eve, and veil their nakedness in mackintoshes. Through streets and open spaces, past mosque doors, with glimpses of the worshippers at prayers seated upon the floor, or lounging in the inner courts, through streets arched in with vines, the trellis work so low that upon horseback one had to bend one’s head in passing, and at the side door of the missionary’s house (Dar-Ebikouros) I got off, and, sending up a boy, was met by Mr. Nairn, who for a moment did not recognise me dressed in the Moorish clothes. There, as upon my first visit to Morocco city, I received a hospitable and courteous welcome. Long we sat talking of our captivity. I learned about the hurried visit of the Oudad with letters, his departure without a word, and found that no one had expected us so soon. Mr. Nairn, who spoke both Arabic and Shillah well, had passed on one occasion close to Kintafi; but, not having been near the castle, was not recognised, but like myself had been unable to push on to Tarudant. This in a measure consoled me for my failure, as Mr. Nairn had lived long in the country, spoke the language well, and with his dark complexion and black hair, dressed in the Moorish clothes, must have looked exactly like a Berber mountaineer. After a welcome and most necessary bath I left his hospitable house and rode to Sid Abu Beckr’s, almost the only man in Morocco city from whom it is possible for a European to get a house. And, as I rode, I mused upon the mystery of faith, and marvelled to see the honest single-hearted missionary still with the cross upon his shoulders, ploughing the stony vineyard of the Moorish heart, quite as contentedly and just as hopefully as he had done four years ago. Yet, not a ray of hope, without a convert or a chance of making one, and still contented, hoping for the time when he should see the fruit of his hard work. Crowds thronged his courtyard in the morning to get medicines, and I fancy as he dispensed his drugs, in the goodness of his heart he tried to do all that was in his power to lead his patients to what he thought the truth. Women in numbers came, not for the medicines, so much as for the bottles, which they valued highly to keep oil for cooking in, throwing the medicine carefully away; but cherishing the flask and bearing it about them always, slung in a little case. Bottles may yet save souls when preaching fails, for women who receive them may so work upon their husbands’ hearts, that by degrees, from the errors of Mohammed and the mere two ounce phial, they rise to the imperial pint and Christianity; and so societies at home should send more bottles out, artfully coloured and with the necks fashioned to hold a string, so that if bibles prove of no effect, bottles may yet prevail.
Not that I mean to undervalue missionaries, they have their uses, but in a different way from that in which perchance they think themselves. What they can do is to set forth, in countries like Morocco, that they are not mere merchants trying to deceive all those with whom they deal. So in Morocco city Mr. Nairn and his wife, and the young men and women of his household, have the respect of all the Moors for the pureness of their life, and their untiring kindness to the poor. The educated Moors see that they are like their own religious sects—that is, their minds are fixed, not upon gain, but prayer, and in the East madness and holiness are held akin, and both, as being sent from heaven, are respected.
In a few hundred yards I left all holiness behind, and getting off at Abu Beckr’s door, found that astute and clever politician seated as usual at the receipt of custom, counting some money which he had just received, a pistol by his side and a large iron box wide open by him in which to store the gold.
Sid Abu Beckr el Ghanjaui is known from the Atlas to the Riff, and from the Sahara to Mogador, feared and disliked, and yet respected, for the Moor above all other things respects success. Not that, by any means, he thinks the less of those who fail. Success and failure are both sent by God, they were ordained (Mektub), and the mere man is but the instrument of Allah’s will. For the last thirty years Sid Abu Beckr has been the British agent in Morocco. During that time he has made many enemies, as any man of ability placed in his position could not fail to do. Of obscure origin and deeply tinged with negro blood, he is, perhaps, to-day the richest and the ablest man in the whole country. Few men in any land have been the victims of more calumnies, but, on the other hand, few men have had more friends. To some, a slave dealer, a traitor, spy, and perjured sycophant; to others, a true friend of England, a man who has suffered much for his devotion to her cause. To me, a clever, scheming politician, who has known the right way in which to play upon the weaknesses of a long series of Ambassadors. A friend to England without doubt, as thrasher is to sword-fish when they attack a whale. A true “faux maigre”; a thin yet flabby man, scant bearded like a eunuch, reedy voiced, and in complexion atrabilious; his shoulders bent, eyes with spots on the yellowish whites, and pupils like a cat’s; slight nervous hands, persuasive manners, and, in fact, one who impresses you at first sight as a keen intellect confined in a mean envelope; but yet not despicable.
Not what is called an educated Moor, still less of the Moorish upper classes by his birth, he yet to-day has as much power in Morocco as any man outside the circle of the court. He says he speaks no English, though I think he understands it, but he takes care to conceal such knowledge of it as he may have, so that in speaking to him, those who speak no Arabic, speaking through an interpreter, may give him ample time for the consideration of every word he says. Never for a moment to be caught off his guard or disconcerted, for the story goes that once, during an ambassadorial visit, a slave dealer came with some merchandise, and that, in answer to the query of the Ambassador if those were slaves, Beckr replied they were, but, as he was an English subject, when they entered through his doors they became free at once.For some reason, not perfectly explained, the Nonconformist conscience, some years ago, was greatly exercised about the man. All that was infamous was put down to his charge. He was a slave-dealer, a brothel keeper, I think a murderer, and, of course, an adulterer, that being the crime the “Conscience Bearers” detested most, being shut out from all participation by the exigencies of their life. All went on merrily as things are apt to go in England when the accused is a good long way off: questions were asked in Parliament as to why England countenanced such a man as Abu Beckr in a position of high confidence. Ministers answered what was put into their heads, having no inkling of who Abu Beckr was, or what had raised the storm. As there was after all no money in the matter, the questioners gradually tailed off. Then Abu Beckr brought an action in the court in Gibraltar, and explained how it was he had been charged with the commission of so many crimes. It turned out that being a Moor he certainly had slaves, and even bought and sold them as we do horses; but as such was the everyday custom of the land, and he, when he took British protection, had not become a Wesleyan Methodist, where was the harm in it? As to the second charge, he had, of course, four wives, and no doubt many women in his house, but, as he pertinently said, that his religion allowed him, and as far as he knew yet, he had not changed his faith. So he triumphantly floored his antagonists, got damages, received eventually a silver tea service from the British Government, and retired to his home to laugh at every one concerned.
Abu Beckr, though he knew I had arrived in town, most likely took me for a Moor from Fez, between whom and the people of Morocco city little love is lost, for somewhat roughly he asked me what I wanted, and did not offer me a seat. I listened to him for a moment, and watched his cunning diplomatic smile, as he looked at me from the corner of his eyes to find out who I was. Then I said in English, “Good morning, Sidi Beckr”; and he laughed and said he had known me all the time, but wanted to see what kind of Arabic I spoke. As he had only seen me once before some years ago, and dressed in European clothes, I only smiled, and said my Arabic was worse than ever, and that I wanted him to lend me some house in which to rest my servants and myself.
A man was brought to accompany us to an empty house hard by; he bore a monstrous key, and after leading us through several narrow streets, stopped at a brand new house, and throwing the door wide open said it was fit for any king, and that he generally received five dollars upon Abu Beckr’s account for opening the door. I told him instantly that I should mention to his master what he said, then took the key out of his hand, gave him a dollar, and asked Lutaif to tell him to what place the Koran condemns all those who palter with the truth. The usual scrubbing and swilling out took place, which always has to be undertaken before it is possible to occupy an empty Moorish house. Once swilled and dried, we installed our scanty property, sent out for food, put up our horses in a fondak not far off, and fell asleep upon the floor. Upon awakening we found the dinner beside us, and a negro squatting, and patiently watching till we should awake.
During the interval, Swani and Mohammed-el-Hosein had both gone to the bath, and then I fancy, after the fashion of all sailors and muleteers after a voyage or trip, gone on the spree, for in the morning they appeared like Mr. Henley’s “rakehell cat,” looking a little draggled, and the worse for wear, and swearing that they had not touched a drop of drink. The patient Ali never stirred away, being, as he said, rather afraid to venture out alone amongst the people in the crowded streets. After a journey in Morocco the men always ask for new shoes, so to show my disgust at the immoral conduct of the others, I took Ali out and made him happy with a pair of evil-smelling yellow leather shoes, adding a pair of gorgeously embroidered orange-coloured slippers for his House.
A dirty little negro boy came to inform us that Sidi Abu Beckr expected us to dine that afternoon at two o’clock, the fashionable hour in the Sherifian capital.
During the interval I walked about the streets, pleased that the Moorish clothes relieved me from the attentions to which I had been subjected on my former visit to the place. Through the interminable streets I strolled, past ruined fountains and the doors of mosques half opened, from whose interiors came a sound of prayer, as from the beehive comes the murmured prayer of bees. Long trains of camels pressed me into corners to escape their snakelike heads, and suddenly, and without consciousness of how I got there, I found myself in a remembered spot. A little alley paved with cobble-stones and bordered on each side with open shops, in which sat squatted white figures working hand looms which filled the alley with their clack. At the end an archway with a wooden gate hanging ajar. I entered it with a strange feeling of possession, and found everything familiar; the tank, with edges of red stucco work, the Azofaifa [274] trees, the bordering hedge of myrtle, the white datura, the curiously cut semi-Italian flower beds, in which grew marjoram and thyme, the open baldachino at the end, under whose leaky roof a friend and I had spread our rugs and spent ten happy days four years ago, smoking, lounging about, and talking endlessly of nothing, as only friends can talk, was all unchanged. What are four years of inattention beside the perennial decay of all things Eastern; the winter rain and summer sun had scarcely put an extra stain or two upon the plaster work, the door was made to last for ages, and the trees had but become a little more luxuriant; so, sitting down, I smoked and fell a-musing on the time when in Morocco all would be changed, and places like the Riad [275a] el Hamri, where I then sat, exist no more. Railway engines (praise him who giveth wisdom to mankind) would puff and snort, men hurry to and fro, tramways and bicycles make life full and more glorious; women unveiled would sell themselves after the Christian way for drink and gold; men lie drunk on holidays to show their freedom from debasing superstition; all would be changed; the scent of camels’ dung give place to that of coal dust; and perhaps Allah, after regarding with complacency the work of man, would rest contented as he did in Eden when his first masterpieces forced his hand.
Sid Abu Beckr met us in the courtyard of his house, dressed in a light green robe, spotless white haik, [275b] new yellow slippers, with a large rosary in his hand, although the oldest citizen of Marakesh had never seen him pray. Leading me courteously by the hand into an upper chamber looking upon a courtyard, and decorated in the purest modern Alhambraesque, he seated me, Lutaif, and then himself, on cushions, and we ate solidly for a full hour, until the welcome sight of tea, served in small gold cups, announced our sufferings were at an end.
Nothing would get out of his head at first that I was not an agent of the Globe Venture Syndicate, or had a mission from the British Government to try and establish some sort of undertaking with the chiefs of Sus. His apprehensions set at rest, or at the least so he pretended, he, too, began to give his views upon the state of current politics. All that the Sherif of Tamasluoght had said he quite corroborated, but with the difference that what he said was the opinion of a quick-witted, clever man, and therefore, to my mind, to some extent brought less conviction than the mere wanderings of the artless “saint.”
Most Arabs of the richer class are quite incapable of seeing anything but from a personal standpoint, and thus it is that, bit by bit, their national power has fallen into decay. In Spain, Damascus, Tunis, and the Morocco of to-day chiefs have arisen, and their sole idea has been to push their individual fortunes. Except the Emir Abd-el-Kader, none have had even a glimpse of trying to restore the Arab power.
So Abu Beckr regaled us with stories of Ba Ahmed’s villainy, his own position and personal insecurity, and assured me that the end was near, and that if England still stood hesitating, France would step in, and lastly, getting for a moment out of his egotism, said, “What avails it that I am so rich when my favourite son died of smallpox only three weeks ago, and I have no one to whom to leave my wealth?” Then he got up and said he had never showed his wealth to anyone, but as he found me so sympathetic to his views (I not having said a word), he would show me all his treasures and his house. Accordingly, we followed him into an interior court, on one side of which a door with about twenty padlocks stood.
Sidi Abu Beckr having assured himself that no one but ourselves was looking on, began to clash and bang amongst the locks and bars, piling the padlocks on the ground, unloosening chains, and making as much noise as a battle of armour-plated knights must have produced in the never-to-be-forgotten days of chivalry, when, in their mail, the scrofulous champions tapped on one another’s shields. At last the door swung open and disclosed a room packed full of boxes, silver dessert services, china of all sorts, lamps, clocks, and every kind of miscellaneous wealth collected in the long course of an honourable career by strict attention to all economic laws. Boxes were there of iron painted in colours, made in Holland and in Spain, standing beside hide cases, teak chests, and old portmanteaux, Saratoga trunks and safes, cash boxes, sea chests, and packing cases, and all apparently stuffed to the very lids. With pardonable pride, and with a flush stealing upon his parchment cheek, he did obeisance to his gods. “This is all silver Spanish dollars, this Sultan Hassan’s coins, this packing case is jewellery. I had it all in pledge. This, silver in the bar, and these hide bags are gold dust, but the king of all,” and here he touched an antiquated safe, “is el d’hab (gold), chiefly in sovereigns. Yes, I know the waste of interest, but do not think you see half of all my wealth; the bulk of it is safely placed in England—consols, I think they call it—safe, but small returns, and smaller since the accursed Goschen lowered the rate. This that you see I keep beside me, partly from caprice, for el d’hab has always been my passion, passing the love of women, horses, or of anything that God has made to ease the life of man.” As he spoke he patted the safe with his slippered feet, and looked as if he knew a special providence watched over him; but knowing did not truckle to the power, but rather took it as a tribute to himself and his ability, as being well assured that providence is always with the strong. As I looked at him, proud of his wealth, his cunning and his good fortune, it seemed as if our nation, with its power, its riches, and its insensibility, was fitly represented by the worthy man, who, from a camel driver’s state, by the sheer force of industry and thrift, had made his fortune.
Blessed are those who rise, to them the world is pleasant and well ordered, all things are right, and virtue is rewarded (in themselves); thrice blessed are the pachydermatous of heart, the deaf of soul, the invertebrate, insensible, the unimaginative; nothing can injure, nothing wound them; nature’s injustice, man’s ineptitude, fortune’s black joking, leaves them as untouched as a blind cart-horse, who, in struggling up a hill, sets his sharp, calkered foot upon a mouse. But as mankind, in strangeness and variety of mind, is quite incomprehensible, Sidi Abu Beckr had but hardly locked the door upon his hoards than he set to bewail his sonless state. “Allah has given me children (so he said), sons, grown to men’s estate, but all unprofitable, idle and profligate, and of those who spend their time in folly, all but one, a boy to whom I hoped to leave my wealth. All that you see was to be his, the silver, gold, this house, my lands, investments in your country, all I have, and as I thought that Abu Beckr had not lived in vain, the pestilence fell on my house and left me poorer than when I was a camel driver; but it was written; God the most merciful, the compassionate, the inscrutable, he alone giveth life, and sends his death to men. Come let me show you where my blessing died.”
Lutaif, who, since the word smallpox had first been mentioned, had held his handkerchief up to his nose, now for the first time in the journey almost broke into revolt. Pulling my “selham,” he whispered, “Let us go, the infectious microbes stand on no ceremony,” and, in fact, wished to retreat at once. Not from superior bravery, but because I knew if there was mischief it was already done, I laughed at all his fears, told him to trust providence, as a good man should do, and that for microbes, probably by this time a new school of scientific men said they were non-existent, and put down all diseases to some other cause. Seeing he got no sympathy from me and perhaps after prayer (prayers, idle prayers) he followed, and Abu Beckr conducted us to a room and opened wide the door. Within, piled up upon the floor were heaps of rugs, and evidently no window had been open for a month. “Here (he said) died my son, and nothing has been touched since he was buried; upon this very rug he breathed his last.” And as he spoke, he lifted up a carpet from the Sahara, woven in blue and red, and moved it to and fro so that the microbes, if there were any, must have had fair play to do their work. Lutaif turned pale, and once more pleaded to be off; but Abu Beckr was inexorable and putting down the rug, led us again through a long passage and opening yet another door, said, “Here the mother died, and nothing has been altered since her death.” At last Lutaif grew desperate and seeing there was no escape began to grow at ease and followed us through countless passages, peeping into rooms in each of which some member of the family had died.
On our return to the alcove, where tea awaited us, we passed a figure swathed in white which turned aside to let us pass, its face against the wall. Abu Beckr took it by the hand and introduced it as the mother of the dead boy’s mother, and a hand wrapped in a corner of a veil stole out, and for a moment just touched mine, but all the time the eyes were fixed upon the ground, after the style of Arab manners, which ordains that a woman must not look a strange man in the face. Something was mumbled in the nature of a complimentary phrase and then the sheeted figure slipped mysteriously away, but no doubt turned to look at the strange animals through some grating in the wall.Lutaif explained that the honour done us was remarkable, and that no doubt Abu Beckr had stopped her to show how free from prejudice he was. The visit ended with more tea and a long talk, in which again I was assured the end was near, and that the Grand Vizir had made the life of every one intolerable, ruined the land, rendered the Sultan despicable, and that all educated men longed for the advent of some European power. Having heard the same tale from the Sherif of Tamasluoght, and as I knew both he and Abu Beckr were rich men and above all things feared attacks upon their wealth, I mentally resolved to talk the matter over with some Arab of the old school and hear his views.
Standing before the door, we found a soldier with a lantern waiting to see us home. We bid farewell to Abu Beckr, watching him stand beneath the archway of his house in his green robe and white burnouse, looking a figure out of the pages of the “Arabian Nights”; but with a scheming brain and subtle mind, able to hold his own with trained diplomatists and to defeat them with the natural craft implanted in him by a wise providence which arms the weak with lies, makes the strong brutal, and is apparently content to watch the struggle, after the fashion of an English tourist gloating upon a Spanish bull fight on a fine Sunday afternoon.
After a two days’ stay, with mules and horses well fed, I left the city, passed through the battlemented gates, and saw the walls, the gardens, palm trees, towers, and last of all the Kutubieh sink out of sight, then set my face westward to cross the hundred and thirty miles of stony plain which stretches almost to Mogador. After the first day’s ride, our animals showed signs of giving out, the starving at Thelata-el-Jacoub having reduced them so much in condition that the two days’ rest had done but little good. Those who have ridden tired horses, through stony wastes heated to boiling point by the sun’s rays, and without chance of finding water on the road, can estimate the pleasure of our ride. On the third day, just about noon, and after toiling painfully at a slow walk through interminable fields of stone, we reached the Zowia of Sidi-el-Mokhtar, where a portion of the tribe Ulad-el-Bousbaa (the sons of Lions) were established, the other portions of the tribe being respectively in Algeria and in the Sahara.
Nothing could possibly have been more desert-like than the surroundings of this tribe. On every side stones, stones, and still more stones. For vegetation thorny Zizyphus, hard wiry grass, stunted euphorbiaceÆ, with colocynths growing here and there between the stones; a palm-tree at the well, and a gnarled sandarac tree, looking as if it had never known a shower, with the leaves as hard as pine needles, stood like a sentinel defying thirst. The Zowia itself seemed even more Eastern than most buildings of its kind, the walls merely baked mud, the towers but hardly overtopping them, and all the animals of a superior class to those raised by the ordinary Moors. The tribe ranks high for fighting qualities, as riders, shots, and swordsmen, and though small, can hold its own against all comers. The women, taller and thinner than the women of the Moors, were dressed in blue, after the desert fashion, and in procession walked to the well, with each one carrying an amphora upon her head.
The Sheikh, a Saharan Sherif, by name Mulai Othmar, was the best specimen of a high-caste Arab I had ever seen. Tall and broad-shouldered, lean and tanned by the sun to a fine tinge of old mahogany, grave and reserved, but courteous. Arabia itself could have produced no finer type of man. He asked us to dismount, put corn before our beasts, and sent a dish of couscousou for ourselves, sat and conversed, drank tea, but would not smoke, saying to smoke was shameful, but all the same he was not able to forbear to ask if tobacco was as strong as kief. Strength being the first object to an Arab, he not unnaturally believed that as our powder far exceeded theirs, so did tobacco far exceed their kief in strength, and seemed a little disappointed when I told him kief was stronger far than any cigarette.
During the two hot hours of noon, whilst the south wind blew like a blast out of a furnace, we squatted underneath the Zowia wall, shifting about to dodge the sun, as it moved westwards, and the Sherif stayed talking with us, as befits a man of blood. Though simply dressed in clean white clothes, he looked a prince, and all our men saluted him with ten times more respect than they had used towards either Abu Beckr or the Sherif of Tamasluoght. Much he imparted of the Sahara, its lore, traditions, told of the “wind drinkers,” [282a] who, in the ostrich hunts, carry their masters a hundred miles a day. Much did he tell us of the Tuaregs, who, being Berbers, are at constant feud with all the Arab tribes. In the Sahara no money circulated, but a good mare was bought for forty camels or two hundred sheep; guns came from Dakar, or St. Louis Senegal, and were called either “Francis,” or else “Mocatta,” though he could give no explanation of the latter term. Beyond San Louis was situate the mysterious Ben Joul, [282b] to which place he said the Inglis came, a nation at eternal enmity with the Francis, fair in complexion, and addicted to strong drink, but pleasant to deal with, and in business having but one word.
Morocco seemed to him too green and overgrown with vegetation, so that a man grew dazzled when he looked at it. He thought no landscape half so fine as a long stretch of sand, flat and depressionless as is the sea, and with a stunted sandarac here and there, a few rare suddra bushes, and in the distance, an oasis, green as an emerald, with its wells, its melon fields, and clustering date palms, with their roots in water, [283] and feathery branches in the fire of the sun. No friend of French or English intervention was the Sherif Mulai Othmar; but a believer in the regeneration of the Moors, by a new intermixture of the desert blood which in times past has often been the salvation of the Arab race. From what he said the ancient Arab manners must have been preserved in all their purity in the Sahara, and, but for the introduction of villainous saltpetre, differ but little in essentials from a thousand years ago.
The low black tents of camels’ hair, the wandering life, the little Arab saddles, used to-day in Syria and in Arabia, and differing widely from the high-peaked saddle of Morocco, the finer breed of horses, and, above all, the pure speech of the Koreish not mixed with Spanish and with Berber words as is the Arabic of the Morocco Moors, all show the great tenacity with which the desert tribes have clung to usages and to traditions hallowed by custom and by time. Finding the Sherif spoke such good Arabic, Lutaif and I agreed to refer to his decision a question of literary interest which had engrossed us for the past few days. A controversy at the time was raging in Morocco amongst the men of letters, as to whether the word Mektub (“It is written”) might not be spelt “Mektab.”
Much had been written, as is usual in such cases, on either side, old friends had quarrelled, and each side looked upon the other as people of no culture and outside the pale of decent men. My preference was for “Mektub,” but Lutaif, who had the prejudice which knowledge of a language sometimes induces, was in favour of “Mektab.” The Sherif considered carefully, and gave his dictum that either could be said, although he added, those who say “Mektab” show want of education. So we were left in the position of the grammarian, whose last words were, “l’un et l’autre se disent.”
Thus, in a week, I had met three Arabs all representative of their several classes, and, as usual, liked the man best who had been least influenced by European ways. Mulai Othmar disdained the idea of European protection, saying it was fit for Jews and slaves, but not for men, and that, for his part, sooner than ask for protection from any European power, he would return into the desert and follow a nomadic life. I took my leave of him with a feeling of real regret, such as one feels occasionally for those one sees but for an instant, but whose features never leave one’s mind. If there are, in the Sahara, many such as he, there is regeneration yet for the Arab race, so that they resolutely refuse all dealings with Europeans; reject our bibles, guns, powder, and shoddy cottons, our political intrigues, and strive to live after the rules their Prophet left them in his holy book. If they forsake them, as in some measure the inhabitants of Morocco certainly have done, slavery, sure and certain, is their lot; and in the time to come our rule, or that of the French or Germans, will transform them into the semblance of the abject creatures who once were free as swallows, and who to-day lounge round the frontier towns in North America calling themselves Utes, Blackfeet, Apaches, or what not, ghosts of their former selves, sodden with whisky, blotched with the filthy ailments we have introduced, and living contradictions of the morality and the religion under which we live.By noon next day we had almost dropped the Atlas out of sight; the enormous wall of rocks rising straight from the plain had vanished; the tall snow-peaks above the chain alone remained in sight, and they appeared to hang suspended in the air. The vegetation changed, and once again the ground grew sandy. The white [285] broom bursting into flower covered it here and there in patches, as with an air of snow new fallen and congealed upon the branches of the plants. Again we passed a range of foothills, rocky and steep, from the top of which, like a blue vapoury haze, we saw the sea; and as we led our jaded animals down the abrupt descent, a Berber shepherd standing on a knoll was playing on his pipe. He stopped occasionally and burst into a strange, wild song, quavering and fitful, the rhythm interrupted curiously, so as to be almost incomprehensible to ears accustomed to street organs, pianos, bands, sackbut, harp, psaltery, and all kinds of music which we have fashioned and take delight in according to our kind; but which I take it would be as void of meaning to a Berber as is our way of life. I checked my horse, and sitting sideways for an instant, tried to catch the rhythm; but failed, perhaps because my ears were dulled by all the noises of our world, and less attuned to nature than those of the brown figure standing on the rock. But though I could not catch that which I aimed at, I still had pleasure in his song, for, as he sang, the noise of trains and omnibuses faded away; the smoky towns grew fainter; the rush, the hurry, and the commonness of modern life sank out of sight; and in their place I saw again the valley of the N’fiss, the giant Kasbah with its four truncated towers, the Kaid, his wounded horse, the Persian, and the strange entrancing half-feudal, half-Arcadian life, which to have seen but for a fortnight consoled me for my failure, and will remain with me a constant vision (seen in the mind, of course, as ghosts are seen); but ever fresh and unforgettable.
Next day about eleven o’clock, driving our horses through the Argan scrub in front of us, tired, dusty, and on foot, we reached the Palm-Tree House.
