Isabel Savory

We Leave Tetuan—A Wet Night under the Stars—S`lam Deserts Us—We Sail for Mogador—The Palm-Tree House—Sus and Wadnoon Countries—The Sahara—The Atlas Mountains.

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CHAPTER IX

The stream of life runs, ah! so swiftly by,

A gleaming race 'twixt bank and bank—we fly,

Faces alight and little trailing songs,

Then plunge into the gulf, and so good-bye.

About the month of April, Morocco takes its head from under its wing; the bad weather turns its back on the country; the tracks dry up and are fit for travellers to take to once more. The time had come for the sake of which we had borne with the rains, and we longed to be off, to know something more of this strange and fascinating land.

May is a better month than April, up in the north, for travelling; April is often dashed with the tail-end of the rains; but our desire was to go down into the far south, and May and June in the south are both too hot to enjoy camping out. April is quite warm enough; indeed, Morocco City "stokes up" early in April; therefore we made it the middle of March when we said good-bye to Jinan Dolero and set our faces Tangier-wards, there to await some steamer which should take us down the coast. The odds and ends which had furnished us at Tetuan and were not wanted had to be sold—a very simple matter. The day before we left our white garden-house, S`lam and some mesdames, as in his best French he always spoke to us of his ragged countrywomen, carried them into the sok, as they were, on their backs; and they were sold to the highest bidder among the market-goers.

To transport ourselves and our belongings over to Tangier, a Jew muleteer was requisitioned, who provided men and mules for the two days' journey. After long consultations we decided to take S`lam with us on our travels in the capacity of personal servant and head cook—partly because he could cook, partly because, in spite of the Tahara-and-bottle-of-water-or-poison episode, we liked him, and he had been a good servant according to his lights. After all, he was probably as trustworthy, and more so, than any man we could pick up in a hurry down south—at least, everybody warned us that they were a set of rascals there, of whom we were to beware. Finally, he was used to us and we were used to him. So S`lam set out with our cavalcade, and we proposed to keep him while we were at Tangier, take him by boat to Mogador, and after our march was over return him to Tetuan. But, while "man proposes——"

I was sorry for Tahara. She was left behind with her old enemy—S`lam's mother. He left the mother money, but Tahara not one flus. He said, too, that when he came back from Morocco City he should go straight off to the Riff and get work there; and Tahara would be left again. Such is the custom of the country: the husband may go off for a year, at intervals returning to his wife, whom he leaves generally under some sort of supervision. So poor little Tahara, who had no voice in her marriage, but had wept all the way to Tetuan under the escort of her bridegroom and brother, was left penniless in the old mother's clutches. She had no relatives near to help her, otherwise I have no doubt that she would have got a divorce. We could only ask Z—— to keep an eye on her, for interference in the Moorish domestic hearth on the part of a European would be a fool's work indeed.

It was March 19 when we began to wander once more, having handed the keys of Jinan Dolero back to its owner and cleared out the little white house. Unfortunately we pitched on the Aid-el-Kebeer (the Great Feast), starting the very day before it was due; and, in consequence of the Mohammedan-World being upside-down with joyful anticipation, could get no good mules, nor induce any one but a Jew to leave Tetuan at such a time. S`lam looked forward to feasting with his brother at Tangier, and started off with a good grace. A more serious miss than either Moorish servants or reliable mounts was perhaps a tent. There was none to be had in Tetuan at just that time, and a night had to be passed upon the way. However, there was no help for it: we set off as we were, and arrived towards sunset at the half-way caravanserai, the little white-walled fondÂk on the top of the hills, where we passed such a windy night, on our way over from Tangier in December, under canvas.

It was a good ride, and our mules travelled badly: saddles and bridles were tumbling to pieces too. For the last mile or so we both walked and sent the baggage on ahead. From a bend round the crest of a hill we said farewell to an uneven white streak set at the foot of the distant hills—Tetuan—and saw it no more. The fondÂk was in front of us, four lonely walls exposed to every change of weather, and no life stirring outside. We walked through the arched gateway into the square, which is surrounded with Norman arches, and found a company of mules and donkeys, of owners and drivers, taking shelter for the night: our own baggage animals were already hobbled in a line in front of the arches, under which the muleteers sit, and drink, and smoke, and sleep the hours away, till the first streak of dawn.

We scrambled up an uneven stone staircase at the corner of the square, and investigated the two little rooms at the disposal of travellers. One look: there were suggestions of the insect world in both. We recrossed the thresholds and sought further: the flat white roof above the arches round the square, if windswept, was too airy to be anything but fresh and wholesome,—it should meet all our demands. Here then, out in the open, under the sky, our two beds were arranged, in the lee of a few yards of parapet which had been built to shelter the west corner of the roof. S`lam had a small pan of charcoal also up on the roof in our corner, over which to get something hot for us to eat; and as soon as the odd little meal was finished we turned in.

The precipitous twilight had shadowed down sufficiently to undress in more or less privacy even upon a housetop; over our beds we spread a thin woollen carpet to keep off the dew; the moon, which was beginning its last quarter, faced us full, in a sky picked out with a few stars, against which the dark outline of the hills was cut clear; there was hardly a fleck of cloud in that best roof under which a man can sleep.

A BREEZY CAMPING-GROUND ON A ROOF-TOP.

A Breezy Camping-Ground on a Roof-Top.

Below, down in the square, the picketed mules stamped and munched barley; the muleteers' voices, back under the arches in the colonnade, arose and fell, round a fire where green tea was brewing and much kif was in course of being smoked; occasionally an owl hooted. Waking from time to time, the moon was always staring down (I shall never forget that moon); but at each interval it had moved farther round overhead. At last it sank behind the field of vision, and up "in that inverted bowl we call the sky" the remote and passionless stars had it all to themselves.

About half-past three in the morning we were awakened suddenly by the patter of rain on our faces, great single drops, which quickened into a hurrying shower; while gusts of wind from the south-west rose and swept round the corner of the low parapet against which we had put the heads of the beds. One glance showed that the sky was overcast; it was very dark, most of the stars were hidden, and there was an ominous sound of rain in the wind. The fondÂk is notably a wet resting-place, for it lies on the top of the watershed which divides the plains of Tetuan and Tangier, and it draws the clouds like a magnet.

One of us put up a sun-umbrella, which had been useful on the hot ride the day before; it kept an end of one bed more or less dry, and fortunately the shower did not last long, while underneath warm bedding it was possible to keep dry for a time. The wind rose, however, and forced itself in at every fold of the bedclothes. We had carefully arranged all our kit under the parapet close to the beds, partly to prevent its being stolen, which sometimes happens if left out of the owner's reach, partly to prevent its rolling or blowing off the unprotected edge of the roof.

The sunset of the night before had not foretold wind; but wind there began rapidly to be, and by-and-by the lid of one of our cooking-pots bowled along the roof, fell over the edge, and rattled on the stones in the square below: a cloth belonging to the cuisine took flight next over the outer wall, and was seen no more. We lay speculating on what might follow. Then another shower began; but the clouds were lifting a little, and it was short if it was sharp; while underneath the blankets there was not much to complain of.

At four o'clock a sound of life began down below; the muleteers were all up and stirring in the square. Lights were lit, for since the moon and stars had been obscured, the night had turned from brilliant light into one of shadows and blackness. Was there to be more rain? Nothing else mattered. In this fine interval—for the last shower was stopping—it seemed wise to get up and dress and have our bedding rolled together: neither of us was going to move into the rooms. Certainly dressing was a chilly opportunity. The evening before had been warm; but the rain freshened the air, and the wind made it still more brisk. It was darker than ever—too windy to have kept a light going; and clothes, discovered with some difficulty in the shadows in hiding-places under rugs and pillows where they had been stowed the evening before to escape the dew, were hurried into in the dark anyhow and any way, half blown inside-out in the wind.

At half-past four S`lam came up on to the roof-top with a light (which was promptly extinguished) and a pail of cold fresh water, in which we had an acceptable wash. He rolled up our bedding, and brought an earthenware pan of burning charcoal, which was stowed away in a corner of the stone stairway out of the wind, and on which the kettle soon began to boil. At this point two remaining stars were put out by the advancing dawn—a wan and shivering dawn. Sitting in the lee of the parapet, five o'clock saw us ready, and supplied with hot tea and eggs. Not long after, the rain-clouds blew over and the day broke clear.

Meanwhile, the muleteers had loaded up and vanished with the first streak of daylight, in order to be in Tetuan in time for the great feast that day; the inner square of the caravanserai was deserted; our own five mules were all that was left. It was not a long business loading them: the last rope was knotted, and the muleteers drove them off. We followed, riding out under the gateway, whereon is written in Arabic a sentence to the effect that Mulai Abdurrahman built the fondÂk in 1256, according to Mohammedan reckoning of time.

The sky was grey and menacing: too many of the little single clouds called "wet dogs" drifted across it. Having started at half-past five, not till three o'clock that afternoon did we reach Tangier; halting once on the march, at ten o'clock, and that only for half an hour for lunch. A heavy storm cut that halt short, for the rest of the day the "wet dogs" were true to themselves, and we were deluged. Vivid lightning flashed and cracking peals of thunder rolled over the plain; it was one of those March days which make March no month for camping out in Northern Morocco. Added to that, the track was in a shocking state—up to the girths in mud and water and clay of a sticky and treacherous nature. The mules slipped back at every step. We had many small rivulets to cross, and were obliged to make great detours in order to circumvent them at all. Even then our baggage was in the greatest peril, for the mules could barely keep their feet; and once down in some of the deepest quagmires, there would have been the utmost difficulty in getting them up again, or in rescuing our unfortunate kit. And the rain came through everything, bedding and all being fairly drenched. The mules which carried the baggage were of course much the best of our beasts: R.'s and my mounts were indeed sorry for themselves. The last hour was the darkest, during which R.'s mule fell down for the sixth or seventh time—it was slippery and rough—and we had the worst piece of country of all to cross, where we found one unfortunate mule bogged in a sort of mud stream. Though a soaking does not greatly signify when dry clothes and a roof lie at the journey's end, nine hours at a foot's pace, through mud and water, wet and weary, will take the heart out of most people. We tailed into Tangier, a dilapidated, worn string of bedraggled vagrants, and rode to the Continental. An hour later, clean and dry, in comfortable chairs, with hot coffee, there was content.

Meanwhile, S`lam was not at all fulfilling our expectations; and since we left the fondÂk, far from distinguishing himself on the march, he failed over and over again to rise to the occasion, excellent servant though he had been in the garden-house near his own city. While the muleteers walked all the way from Tetuan, driving the baggage-mules and urging on our own, S`lam by arrangement rode on the top of a light load; and there he sat, huddled up on the mule, wet and discontented, dawdling behind, last of all, in the cavalcade, and anything but living up to his character of soldier-servant and escort. By virtue of his late service in the Algerian army and his rifle, he should have been admirably adapted to fill that capacity; but less like a soldier, and more like a whimpering dog, man never looked. Nor did he look after our things, allowing them to be badly exposed to the rain, and taking no precautions for protecting anything. In the face of condemnation he sulked.

Arrived at Tangier, nearly a week elapsed before a Hungarian boat put in, by which we could sail for Mogador. S`lam was of course due daily at the hotel to report himself and to execute orders. It was on one of these occasions, upon the very morning before we were due to start for Mogador, that he sprung upon us his intention of going straight back to Tetuan. This announcement came rather like a bolt from the blue. We had congratulated ourselves upon taking down into the interior a more or less tried and faithful knave, where knaves of such a description were proverbially scarce; and now our henchman announced that he had no longer any wish or any intention of accompanying us to Morocco City.

The reasons or excuses which he gave were: first, that his wages were insufficient; and, secondly, that "a courier" had been sent over to him from Tetuan to tell him that his mother and his wife were quarrelling to such a degree that Tahara had threatened to go back to her native Riff country with her brother unless S`lam returned, and if she took that step it would mean a divorce.

His wages had been already raised considerably, because the post he was now to fill had more duties connected with it: they might have been further increased. The other excuse may or may not have been true; but as the two women had never done anything else except quarrel, the situation was a foregone conclusion. The old mother may have been trying to poison Tahara again. But would S`lam trouble to prevent that? Whatever his motive, it was more than annoying that at the last moment he should throw us over, leaving no time in which to look out for a new man, and a reliable man, without whom, in a country as lawless as Morocco, it would be a little rash, on the part of two people only, to travel.

But an unwilling servant is not to be endured. We gave S`lam his release, stipulating only that he should return the dollars advanced him for his wife and mother not many days before.

To this he protested that he had no money, not a peseta left—every coin had either been spent at the feast or had been left at Tetuan.

In this case, the best plan would be, we said, for S`lam to take with him a letter to the Consul at Tetuan explaining to him what had happened; then as S`lam earned money, he might pay it into the Consul's hands for us, until he had made good the sum advanced him. At this S`lam looked blank: he said such a letter would mean prison for him. We stood firm. It was a rude shock to our faith when his hand found its way into the leather bag at his side under his jellab, and he pulled out and threw on the table two-thirds of the money which had been given him.

It was suggested that he should pay the whole sum.

No! he was penniless.

Then in that case he could sell the new jellab he had just bought.

He scoffed at the idea.

In reply to our order to come to the hotel the first thing the following morning and see our baggage safely on board the steamer, he said that he should leave Tangier at daybreak, and that it was quite impossible for him to attend upon us, evidently expecting that his prepaid wages would be amicably allowed to slide. But not in the face of this final desertion. We reiterated the former course—a letter to the Consul at Tetuan; again he pleaded abject poverty; but meeting only with inclemency, once more plunged his hand into his bag, and pulled out dollars amounting exactly to the sum which he had been advanced.

So much for his poverty. We were now, he explained, "quits." "All was right between us." He "would not like to leave us with a trace of ill feeling remaining between us and himself."

He did leave us, however, with his tail fairly between his legs, and, if he had been kicked out of the hotel, could not have gone forth more sadly.

What motive he had for going back to Tetuan, or what whim seized him in Tangier, remained a mystery. Impulsive as a child, he had been at first madly keen, so he said, to go with us to the world's end; then, as the time approached, in the same ratio his ardour evaporated; until, finally, he had no more desire left, and on the march over to Tangier grew more indifferent and morose at every step. While we were in Tangier he was like a fish out of water. And yet he had been once to Fez and to Morocco City: he was a travelled man. Possibly he had a more remunerative billet in view, or was homesick, or jealous about Tahara. After all, whatever the reason, his line of conduct was only distinctly Moorish, and characteristic of a race in which, as a whole, no wise man places great reliance. A Moorish servant will not rob his European master: perquisites are a sine qua non, of course. Probably his lies are no blacker than those of European servants; but the Moor, in place of that quality of faithfulness which can ennoble an English rascal, has a cold-blooded current in his veins. His manners may be charming—he is a plausible devil; but lean upon him, and he turns out to be as jerry-built as his own crumbling whitewashed walls.

It is with somewhat of a feeling of banishment into the unknown, that the passenger by the little coast-steamer takes his departure from Tangier, and sees first its white houses and yellow sands, and last of all Spartel lighthouse, disappear as the boat ploughs southwards. Once upon a time Gibraltar had constituted in our minds the outposts, so to speak, of civilization; but since we had spent three months in such an unexplored spot as the Tetuan vale and mountains, without society of the conventional type, or library, or church, or any other adjuncts, Tangier, when we came back to it, appeared in the light of a Paris. And now Tangier was again to be left behind; and on one of the little coasting-steamers, which deliver cargo at ports on the way, we meant to travel down to Mogador. To have marched the same distance would have meant perhaps a month on the road, going by Fez and taking it easily; therefore we saved much time by taking the steamer. Though by all report it was not likely to be at all a comfortable journey, it could only last four days at most; and few travellers but can stand four days' discomfort.

We did not start without a few warnings and cautions from various friends, who seemed inclined to think that we were doing an unprecedented thing in thus setting off alone into the interior without even a reliable servant, which since the desertion of S`lam was the case. That could not be helped. We hoped for the best as regarded finding men in Mogador.

ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE WAY WE RODE IN MOROCCO.

Illustrative of the Way We Rode in Morocco.

Sir Arthur Nicolson had provided us with letters of introduction to the British Consul in Mogador, and to a Moor in Morocco City, where it is unnecessary to say there are no representatives of the English Government. I had written to him on the subject of getting up to Glaouia, in the Atlas Mountains, and had received the following reply:—

This letter was a blow. But when we finally reached Morocco City we found that the thing could be done—that we could get up to Glaouia either under the protection of the English missionaries or with a certain Jewish trader who lives in Morocco City. The fact of the matter is, that to travel "officially," as it were, in Morocco is a fatal mistake. It means a written permission from the Sultan, an army of followers, a commotion wherever a halt is made, and a great deal of hospitality. The Sultan does not encourage Europeans to travel out of the ordinary line of route, on account of the superstitious and fanatical spirit of his people, which would be roused to wrath against him, were he to countenance the invasion of their sacred land by infidels. Consequently, when he gives a permit, he writes upon the document to the effect that the Christian is committed to the care of Kaid So-and-so, and Kaid So-and-so is to see that no ill happens to him.

When the Christian traveller arrives at the district belonging to this kaid, through which he wishes to pass, he goes to the castle and delivers the permit. The kaid reads it, and knows what it means: the Sultan only wishes the Christian to be kept to frequented roads. Therefore the Christian is offered every hospitality, and the kaid almost weeps as he explains that it is impossible for the traveller to proceed—the tribesmen are dangerous, are in revolt along the line the Christian wishes to go. The traveller says he will take his chance. His servants, primed by the kaid, refuse to go with him on the score of the danger. If he manages to get away with one trusty follower, the kaid sends soldiers after them, fetches them back to the castle—to save their lives, he says, and his own life, which would be forfeited if a hair of their heads was injured. The Christian, after his rebellious conduct, may be forced to return discomforted to the coast towns, or he may be allowed to march on in another direction, keeping on the beaten track. Thus the Moorish Government will politely frustrate enterprising spirit on the part of the infidel. But if the traveller is content with other than a royal progression through the country, if he will travel quietly and without ostentation, dressed according to the habits of the people, and be prepared to "rough it," the chances are, that he may get to places which he could never have reached while impeded by a Government escort.

But the way above all others to travel in Morocco is to secure the help of a missionary and to go with him. Medicine is the golden key which opens every gate; and a Moor will do anything for a tabiba (doctor), which is what a missionary practically is to him. The missionary arrives at a remote village, and the countryside flocks to him to have its teeth pulled out, its sores doctored, its fevers cured; and if the tabiba wishes to go on farther, by whatever path, who shall gainsay him, while he carries life and health in his hands? He understands their dialect a little, he dresses as they do, and he brings no overbearing servants to eat up their substance. Nor is he a spy, but only some harmless fanatic, some quaint Nazarene, who thinks to win heaven by thus walking the earth and doing good.

Thus several missionaries have penetrated to places in Morocco, from entering which, Europeans are debarred: they have not "advertised" themselves nor written books upon what they have seen. But the thing has been done, and not only by men. Women missionaries have been where no Christian is supposed to be allowed. Indeed, it should be easier for women, in one way, to travel in forbidden territory than men, because their sex is not credited with the sense which could do harm; and the idea of a woman spying, or thinking to exploit the country, discover mines, and so on, would be absolutely laughable to a Moor. Probably women, with a large stock of medicines and a knowledge of the country dialect, could travel in the unknown "Beyond" with comparatively little risk.

There is one other way for the Englishman to see something of the less-known districts of Morocco, and that is to travel under the protection of a holy Sharif. Sharifs are, like the Sultan, descendants of Mohammed, and they possess the holy baraka—that is, the birthright of the Sharifian line. They are little gods, and they have immunity from the laws of God and man. Their advice is sought for and followed by the ordinary country people on every question, and their decision is invariably accepted as final. There is no such thing as an aristocratic class or nobility in Morocco; and yet the Sharifs answer in a way to the same idea, for they possess a religious authority which sets them far above their countrymen, and constitutes them, in a sense, lords over the people. Besides, they act greatly as mediums between the secular governors and the tribes, and judge upon various matters. It is possible for a holy Sharif to sin, but quite impossible for him to be punished, the obvious argument being that "the fire of hell cannot touch a saint in whose veins runs the blood of the holy Prophet."

The Sharifian families form an entire class by themselves. They are fed and clothed and housed by a convenient system of religious taxation, and large presents are made them, while after death their tombs become objects of visit to all devout Mohammedans.

A holy Sharif generally rides a horse, and he dresses in white, with a blue cloth cloak, or else a white woollen over-garment. He wears a pair of yellow slippers, or perhaps riding-boots, called temag, buttoned all up the back with green silk buttons, and embroidered down the side with silk and silver thread. A scarlet fez and a white turban complete him.

Sharifs never shave under the chin, since the days when a certain sultan was being shaved thus by a barber who had it in his mind to cut the royal throat. But a little boy passing saw the evil design in the barber's eye. With great presence of mind he rushed into the shop, crying to the Sultan, "O Most Holy One! the Great Mosque has fallen down!" Both sultan and barber leapt up and rushed out: the boy explained matters to the sultan, and the barber was killed.

But neither Sharif nor missionary-doctor had we any hope of meeting at Mogador, able and willing to travel into the Atlas Mountains with us. We started with plenty of chances open in front, but with nothing certain whereon to rely. Telegraph station and all such vanities were left behind us at Tangier: letters could not reach us till we ourselves reached Morocco City, ten or twelve days being the time they would take to arrive there from Tangier. Our agents—Cook & Son—in the latter place, had instructions to open all wires, and in an urgent case to forward to us by a rekass (a runner), who might do the distance in as short a time as seven or eight days. A wire sent thus, by a rekass, might cost three or four pounds, according to the time the man took: the faster he did the journey, the more he should be paid.

In spite of its hotels Tangier does not possess a single shop where English newspapers or books can be bought. Our literature had by this time reached a low ebb; and on board the Hungarian boat, at a time when one generally reads omnivorously because there is nothing else to do, we had but a couple of standard books to fall back upon—a history of the country was one, the other a volume of Lecky. The history was fairly committed to heart before travelling days were done.

On the whole, when at last we got off in the little Hungarian steamer, she did not leave much to be desired. For three days we had hung on at the Continental Hotel, waiting for the hourly expected arrival of the boat, beginning almost to despair of her ever coming in.

Finally, patience was rewarded, and one afternoon, with all our baggage, we went on board. We had everything wanted for camping out except tents, and these were to be hired at Mogador. A great wooden kitchen-box held pots, pans, knives, etc., and a case contained potted meats, soups, biscuits, and so forth.

R. and myself were the only women on board when we left Tangier: eight men joined us at dinner that night, at one long table in the small saloon, and we were said to fill the boat. She was very small, only eighteen hundred tons, and there was not much room for walking about on her; but we never went out of sight of the coast, and, sitting on a couple of chairs, could see through the glasses whatever was going on on the beach—which, I must add, was little enough, at a time when the smallest incidents become of importance. The greater part of the Arpad was given up to cargo. We landed green tea in quantities at Mazagan, and black-wood, cane-seated chairs for the Jews and Spaniards living there, as well as bales of goods and casks; but we took nothing on board, and the Arpad became more and more like an empty egg-shell, with a decided inclination to roll, on the swell which invariably sets down that coast.

The captain, a small dark Hungarian, when we left Tangier, changed into a thin tweed suit and straw hat: he did not understand English. There was no stewardess; but the steward, who did all the waiting at table, spoke a little German. One of our fellow-passengers was an Englishman, born in Morocco, without any desire to leave it—his horizon Gibraltar: he was Dutch Consul at Mazagan. Another man was a grain merchant in Mazagan. All were interesting, and could tell us a great deal about the country. Certainly the coast-line, as seen from the deck of the Arpad, was monotonous, desolate, uninviting to a degree: a long low shore, khaki-coloured, treeless, without sign of life, did not raise in us regrets that we had come by sea, especially when told that what we saw, was a fairly correct sample of most of the country we should have ridden through.

LIGHTERS LOADING.

Lighters Loading.

On the entire six hundred miles' length of coast south of Cape Spartel, and down which we were steaming, there is not a single lighthouse, bell, beacon, or buoy to mark a reef or shoal, nor is there any harbour, and no steamer dares to lie close in-shore off a port at night. Therefore, as there are several ports at which cargo has generally to be landed or taken on board, steamers go on the line of steaming all night, and lying outside a port in the daytime, while boats carry cargo between them and the shore. Rabat, Casablanca, Mazagan—we stopped at them all, and got accustomed to the eternal clank of the crane hoisting bales in and out of the boats; to rolling on to the backs and down into the troughs of the Atlantic combers.

Finally, we reached Mogador early on the morning of Good Friday, 1902, and said good-bye to the uneasy Arpad and its primitive mÉnage without regret: irregular, white-walled Mogador, set in its rock-locked harbour, lay in front of us. It was the hot south—there was no doubt about that. The Riviera is called "the sunny south," and Tangier is warmer than the Riviera; but penetrate inland into Africa, go down as far as Mogador, and it is another thing altogether. Here there is no trace of Europe, but a great sense of being far away in letter and spirit from England—farther away than Bombay, and many another place, which out-distances it in miles again and again.

We saw Mogador first in a grey light: heavy thunder-clouds hung above; dim and visionary hills lay behind; a regiment of camels paraded the wet sands in front, and lay in the sun underneath the battlemented walls; black flags floated from the mosque-tops, for it was the Mussulman Sunday. For the rest Mogador is a city of sea and sand—sand, sand, and yet more sand: it takes two hours' riding to get to anything else except sand.

With the grey waves washing round two sides of it, and two sides blown and sanded by desert wastes, white-walled Mogador has a somewhat saddened aspect, as of lifeless bleached bones, apart from the fact that it is so far removed from the outer world.

And infinitely remote, it certainly is. A telegram takes about a fortnight to reach England; so that an answer by wire to a wire can be expected in about a month. A letter sent by a special courier to Tangier takes eight days—a distance of four hundred miles: by this means a wire could be sent to England in nine days. The steamers to Mogador are most irregular, because, in view of there being no safe anchorage, a boat will not put in in bad weather. Cargo, passengers, and mails are often and often enough not landed at all, and the inhabitants of the city see but the stern of the vanished steamer with all their letters on board, not to return perhaps for a week. When the English Consul married, and his furniture was sent out from England, the Forward boat, which brought it, came in sight of Mogador, and, being a rough day, went off to Madeira and on its round by the Canary Isles, back to London again, without touching at the sad white city at all. In this way things are apt to be lost: it has happened with passengers.

A rowing-boat landed us on green seaweedy rocks, and we walked up the old shell-encrusted water-stairs, and under the arch of the Water-port Gate, above which is carved in Arabic, "The glorious King, my lord Mohammed, ordered the building of this gate by his servant Hamed, son of Hammoo, 1184."

Once on a time, Agadir, a city on the coast, much farther south, was the great port and commercial centre of Southern Morocco; but it was far removed from the Sultan's grasp, the tax-gatherer could pursue the even tenor of his ways without interruption, and the kaid afford to be dictatorial and troublesome. Then the heavy hand fell, and the Sultan's armies closed the seaport, offering its throng of prosperous merchants the alternative of going to prison or of taking up their abode in Mogador. This they did, and Mogador arose; while to work the lighters (the cargo-boats), and to generally serve the merchants, a company of Berbers was transported with them from the Sus and Agadir to the new seaport. Beyond the Water-port Gate we met a line of heavily laden camels, with a company of athletic Berber drivers from the Sus, in quaint long tunics of butcher-blue, and lank black hair: many of the men veiled themselves; they all looked as wild as hawks, different from any type hitherto seen.

The familiar Hebrew broker, in dark blue or black gabardine and greasy skull-cap, was strongly en evidence; while as to the state of the dogs we met, of them must the Moorish proverb be written, "If fasting be a title to Paradise, let the dog walk in first."

Our baggage had all to pass through the Customs House inside the Water-port Gate; and there we walked, through great white-walled courtyards, whose vistas, of arch beyond arch, suggested Temple courts. Donkeys laden with skins were hurrying across them. Now and then a train of camels swung along, carrying gum or wax or argan oil or almonds. In a good almond year as many as a thousand camels have sometimes come into Mogador in one day. The Customs House officer was at breakfast, and we awaited his coming by our baggage. At last there was a stir among the many hands who had carried our things up from the boat, and the most solemn and dignified individual conceivable slowly sailed upon the scene, way being made for his flowing robes, which were white as a sheet of best glazed "cream-laid" before the pen marks it. I handed him our pass-paper from the Customs House officer at Tangier, feeling like a humble subject laying a petition before a monarch: he slowly unfolded it, and more slowly searched for and produced a pair of spectacles in a silver case. Lastly, having read the document and reviewed our pile, he "passed" it with an impressive wave of his hand. He then took a seat, a Moor minion on each side: we filed solemnly past him, shaking him by the hand. A new-born infant has not such a guileless face as that bland Arab.

We took up quarters in the Suera Hotel, managed by a capable Scotchwoman and her husband, who had once farmed on the veldt. Early next day I rode to Palm-tree House on a little horse belonging to the hotel: out by the Beach Gate, we cantered along the sands close to the sea, crossed the river, left the patron saint-house of Mogador on our left hand, bore upwards across the sandy dunes, and struck inland over hard calcareous rock, where, in the teeth of the wind, the sand never lies. It was blowing, that day, a hot desert wind, which in a naturally hot place only makes one the hotter: with the wind, came a good deal of fine sand, on a really windy day making riding almost impossible.

Palm-tree House is a hotel four miles south-east of Mogador, in the loneliest of situations, with the advantage of a view and an open, wild country all round: it has none of the drawbacks of the city; it is breezy, wild, and bare. Having reached the top of the dunes, we struck off in more or less of a bee-line for Palm-tree House, still riding over soft sand, where nothing but miles upon miles of r`tam (white broom) grew, lovely when in flower, of which we were destined to see almost more than enough before we left Southern Morocco.

The horses ploughed their way through the white track; two or three butterflies hovered about the r`tam; chameleons scuttled occasionally over the path; a tortoise crept along. There were not a few locusts about either, looking like handsome little dragon-flies on the wing. A last canter along one of the rough rides through the scrub led us up to the house, planted well on a rising sand-hill, a view of the sea in front, the hills behind.

There are no palm-trees, and there is no garden, nor is there any water, I was told, on the spot; but for all that, Palm-tree House might have been a satisfactory lodge wherein to put up. The stunted bush and the sand fringed the very walls. It had the country to itself, and there was nothing but itself which could spoil that country. It was cool and airy and oddly quiet. Inside, tiles and open patios and big panelled rooms gave all that could be desired: outside, there was an impression of simplicity and freedom.

The stables were a great point, and the bobbery pack, which hunt pig for five months all through the winter, accounted in one season for something like nineteen full-grown boar, ten tuskers, and nine sows.

Palm-tree House belonged for more than twenty years to a British merchant, who simply provided accommodation for any sportsman liking to come out and put up for a week or so outside Mogador: it has still the air of a shooting-box. The host, in breeches and gaiters and a great felt wideawake, rode up while we were there, and offered us every hospitality—a tall wiry man, with good hands and seat.

Had time been of no object, we should have moved on into Palm-tree House. It would be a spot to visit at any season, for the climate scarcely varies all the year round: the difference between summer and winter is not more than five degrees.

Back again in the city and strolling round it that same afternoon, the conviction was borne in upon us that of all saddening spots Mogador was possibly the saddest—that is, to the traveller, from an outside point of view: residents may have another tale to tell. But without vegetation or cultivation within sight, suggestive of life and change and labour, with the monotonous roar of the grey breakers beating its seaward walls, and wastes of blown white sand to landward, Mogador is the picture of a city which has lost all heart, and settled down into grim apathy, without a vestige of joy or activity outside its walls. The overcrowding of the Jews in the Mellah is a shocking evil, already stamping the rising generation with disease.

Earlier by three-quarters of an hour than Tetuan at the same time of year, the city gates at Mogador were shut at six o'clock, and picnic parties of Moorish or European traders were hurried back in broad daylight. We met the basha gravely pacing the sands on a white mule with scarlet trappings—of all stout officials, in a country where it is a sin and a shame on the part of one in office to be thin, the stoutest. His broad body overshadowed the big mule, and his two little legs might have been a pair of ninepins below a vast cask draped in white.

To the south of Mogador lies first the Sus country and then Wadnoon, dividing the Morocco which is partly known to Europeans, from the Sahara, which nobody knows. The Sus may be said to be practically unknown, and it is distinctly "forbidden" land, through which only two or three travellers have ever passed—Oskar Lenz, Gatell, Gerhard Rohlfs, and possibly a missionary; but they were all disguised and went in terror of their lives; nor have they left satisfactory records of their experiences.

AFTER RAIN IN MOGADOR.

After Rain in Mogador.

And yet the Sus is comparatively close to Mogador, with which it trades; mules from the Sus were always in the Mogador market; camels were coming in every week with wool, camels' hair, goat-skins, hides, beeswax, a little gold dust, ostrich feathers, gum-arabic, cattle, and all the produce of the Sahara; while the Berbers from the Sus were interesting above any Riffis or tribesmen with whom we had hitherto met.

Their country is supposed to contain rich mines: it is said to be fertile and thickly populated; it is not loyal—on the contrary, it is ill-affected to its liege lord, the Sultan; it is fanatical to a degree, and largely swayed by a form of government best expressed by its title—Council of Forty. In return for their own goods the Berbers from the Sus carry back into their country all sorts of Manchester goods, powder, tea, sugar, cheap German cutlery, and the like.

These same Berbers, of unknown origin, were, so the Koran tells us, packed up by King David, in olden times, in sacks, and carried out of Syria on camels, since he wished to see them no more. Arrived somewhere near the Atlas Mountains, their leader called out in the Berber tongue "Sus!" which means "Let down!" "Empty out!" So the exiles were turned out of their sacks, and the country in which they settled is called Sus to this day.

Wadnoon trades to a great extent with the Soudan, and Mogador receives an immense amount of its ostrich feathers: slaves are the most important article of commerce in Wadnoon, and Morocco is the chief market for this traffic in humanity, the slaves being brought chiefly to Morocco City.

But if a fever lays hold of the traveller for penetrating into the unknown Sus, what must be felt of the great Sahara, that waveless inland sea of sand, with its eternal stretches of depressionless wastes reaching on, past horizon after horizon? Perhaps an occasional oasis, green as young corn; a well; a feathery date-palm; a melon-patch. But rare are these things, and for the most part the Sahara is an endless desert which few Europeans could cross and live. Its ancient lore, its mystic traditions, give it a fascination all its own. Imagine the ostrich-hunting on its borders; picture the natives riding their unequalled breed of horses, the wind-drinkers, which carry their masters a hundred miles a day, and which, ridden after the birds up-wind, gradually tire them down, until they can be knocked on the head with a bludgeon; the Arabs too, themselves, with the unforgettable manners possessed by such as Abraham, and handed down from time immemorial; last of all, Timbuctoo, the Queen of the Desert, the fabled home of the voracious cassowary,—does not the picture imperiously summon the traveller "over the hills and far away"? Very far away; for Timbuctoo is twelve hundred miles from Mogador, and a journey there would mean at least forty days across the Sahara, through a country belonging to peoples in no way friendly towards "infidels," where oases are few and far between.

Some day we may know the Sahara under other conditions, for a scheme was started years ago with the intention of flooding the great desert by means of a canal from the Atlantic Ocean, which should carry water on to El Joof, an immense depression well below sea-level somewhere in the centre. Thus, where all is now sand, would lie a vast sea: we should "boat" to Timbuctoo. So far, however, the scheme has begun and ended in words.

But though the great Sahara is desert pure and simple, it is a mistake to imagine it devoid of life. Even as there has never yet been found a collection of aborigines without its totem, neither are there any extensive parts of the globe where life of some sort does not exist. The Sahara is little known, chiefly because the oases in the centre are occupied by intensely hostile and warlike tribes, whose animosity is chiefly directed towards the French, whom they hate with a deadly hatred. But the edges of the great desert have been visited, and on the northern limits two animals are found—the addax antelope, and Loder's gazelle. The wide-spread hoofs of the addax antelope enable it to travel over sand at a great pace. It is a large and ungainly beast with spiral horns. Probably it follows in the wake of the rains wherever they go; but what happens to it in the dry season is unknown. Similarly with Loder's gazelle: though more or less a desert animal, it is a mystery how it remains alive through the long rainless months, in places apparently without water, and on wastes of rolling, wind-drifted sand.

Of the natural inhabitants of desert country, the Sahara is by no means devoid: sand-lizards, jumping-mice, sand-grouse, sand-vipers, desert-larks, and even a family of snakes belonging to the boas, are to be found. The khaki-coloured sand-grouse are most difficult to see on the yellow face of the country: the sand-rats and sand-moles all take on the colour of their surroundings, and thus hide and protect themselves: one and all exist in some marvellous manner where it would seem that existence could only be miraculous. The skink is met with, beloved of the Romans, who imported desert-skinks into Rome in Pliny's day, and held them a valuable remedy for consumption, chopped up into a sort of white wine: the trade was brisk in 1581. To-day the Arabs consider it a remedy, and eat it as a food. It acts very much in the same way as do flat-fish in the bottom of the sea, sinking itself under the sand, allowing the sand to lie over its back and cover it, like a flounder, only leaving its sharp eyes out of cover, and sometimes the spines on its back.

For the maintenance of all this animal life, it is quite possible that rain may occasionally fall even upon desert, and disappear with lightning-like rapidity; for on the borders of certain African deserts in the north a phenomenon very much like the description of the Mosaic manna occurs when the plains have been wetted with rain. The surface is seen next morning "covered with little white globes like tiny puff-balls, the size of a bird-cherry, or spilled globes of some large grain." It is gathered and eaten by the Arabs, but, like an unsubstantial fungus growth, melts or rots in the course of a day or two.

Enough of the Sahara. Meeting with men in Mogador who had come straight from the mysterious country, veiled, untamed, and remotely removed from European touch, our interest was naturally kindled in that Back of the Beyond. There is no need for the traveller to penetrate so far as either the Sahara or the Sus. Long before he reaches them, and in order to do so, he must cross the Atlas Mountains by one of the wild passes, and the great chain of the Atlas is still unsurveyed and practically unknown. Sir Joseph Hooker and Dr. Ball explored a part of its valleys many years ago: no one since then has made a satisfactory attempt to learn details. The chain is supposed to be about thirteen thousand feet high, and it is about twenty miles from Morocco City; but the character of the lawless chiefs and tribesmen who inhabit it, so far prevents intrusion and exploration. In a few days we were to see it—the mighty, solitary wall, on which the ancients believed the world to rest, described by Pliny, rising abruptly out of the plains, snowclad, one of the world's finest sights: the Atlas had largely brought us to Southern Morocco.