Produced by Mark C. Orton, Linda McKeown, Julia Neufeld
(illustrations were generously made available by The
Internet Archive) and the Online Distributed Proofreading
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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE CAMEL CORPS OF EGYPT]
The Rulers
of
The Mediterranean
BY
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
AUTHOR OF
"THE WEST FROM A CAR-WINDOW" "GALLEGHER"
"VAN BIBBER AND OTHERS" ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration: Publisher's Logo]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1894
Copyright, 1893, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
TO
HON. EDWARD C. LITTLE
EX-DIPLOMATIC-AGENT AND CONSUL-GENERAL
OF
THE UNITED STATES TO EGYPT
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR 1
II TANGIER 37
III FROM GIBRALTAR TO CAIRO 72
IV CAIRO AS A SHOW-PLACE 102
V THE ENGLISHMEN IN EGYPT 139
VI MODERN ATHENS 178
VII CONSTANTINOPLE 198
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
ONE OF THE CAMEL CORPS OF EGYPT _Frontispiece_
THE MAN FROM DETROIT 5
THE ROCK FROM THE BAY 9
TYPES 13
GIBRALTAR AS SEEN ACROSS THE NEUTRAL GROUND 15
AN ENGLISH SENTRY 19
A SPANISH SENTRY 21
SIGNAL STATION ON THE TOP OF THE ROCK 25
CANNONS MASKED BY BUSHES 29
TEA IN THE OFFICERS' QUARTERS 33
BREAD MERCHANTS AT THE GATE 41
SANITARY OUTFIT DUMPING REFUSE OVER THE WALL 47
A WOMAN OF TANGIER 53
WATER-VENDER AT THE DOOR OF A PRIVATE HOUSE 57
A STREET DANCER 63
IN THE PRISON 67
MALTESE PEDDLERS 75
STREET OF SANTA LUCIA, MALTA 79
BRINDISI 85
PILLAR OF CAESAR AT BRINDISI 89
APPROACH TO ISMAILIA BY THE SUEZ CANAL 93
STEAM-DREDGE AT WORK IN THE SUEZ CANAL 97
BAZAR OF A WORKER IN BRASS 105
GROUP OF NATIVES IN FRONT OF SHEPHEARD'S HOTEL 109
A BRITISH SQUARE FORMED IN FRONT OF THE PYRAMIDS 117
SHADOW OF THE PYRAMID OF CHEOPS 123
A SECTION OF THE PYRAMID 129
DAHABEEYAHS ON THE NILE BEFORE CAIRO 135
EGYPTIAN INFANTRY IN THEIR DIFFERENT UNIFORMS 141
RIAZ PASHA, PRIME-MINISTER OF EGYPT 145
AN EGYPTIAN LANCER 149
TIGRANE PASHA, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 153
A CAMEL CORPS PATROL AT WADI HALFA 157
H. H. ABBAS II., KHEDIVE OF EGYPT 161
THE GUN MULE OF THE MULE BATTERY 165
LORD CROMER, THE ENGLISH DIPLOMATIC AGENT IN EGYPT 169
A GUN OF THE MULE BATTERY IN ACTION 173
GREEK SOLDIER IN THE NATIONAL (ALBANIAN) UNIFORM 179
GREEK PEASANT GIRL 181
THE UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS 183
ALBANIAN PEASANT WOMAN 186
ALBANIAN PEASANT WOMAN 187
GREEK PEASANT 188
ALBANIAN PEASANT IN THE STREETS OF ATHENS 189
POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL 191
AN OLD ATHENIAN OF THE PRESENT DAY 194
A GREEK SHEPHERD 195
GENERAL VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE 201
ONE OF THE SULTAN'S PALACES ON THE BOSPORUS 205
A FIRE COMPANY OF CONSTANTINOPLE 209
STREET DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE 215
GUARD OF CAVALRY PRECEDING THE SULTAN TO THE MOSQUE 219
EXTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA 225
[Illustration: THE RULERS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN]
I
THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR
[Illustration: Gibraltar]
If you have always crossed the Atlantic in the spring-time or in the
summer months, as do most tourists, you will find that leaving New York
in the winter is more like a relief expedition to the north pole than
the setting forth on a pleasure tour to the summer shores of the
Mediterranean.
There is no green grass on the hills of Staten Island, but there is,
instead, a long field of ice stretching far up the Hudson River, and a
wind that cuts into the face, and dashes the spray up over the tugboats
in frozen layers, leaving it there like the icing on a cake. The
Atlantic Highlands are black with bare branches and white with snow, and
you observe for the first time that men who go down to the sea in ships
know nothing of open fireplaces. An icy wind keeps the deck as clear as
a master-at-arms could do it; and sudden storms of snow, which you had
always before associated with streets or fields, and not at all with the
decks of ships, burst over the side, and leave the wood-work wet and
slippery, and cold to the touch.
And then on the third or fourth day out the sea grows calm, and your
overcoat seems to have taken on an extra lining; and strange people, who
apparently have come on board during the night, venture out on the
sunlit deck and inquire for steamer chairs and mislaid rugs.
These smaller vessels which run from New York to Genoa are as different
from the big North Atlantic boats, with their twin screws and five
hundred cabin passengers, as a family boarding-house is from a Broadway
hotel. This is so chiefly because you are sailing under a German instead
of an English flag. There is no one so important as an English
captain--he is like a bishop in gold lace; but a German captain
considers his passengers as one large happy family, and treats them as
such, whether they like their new relatives or not. The discipline on
board the _Fulda_ was like that of a ship of war, where the officers and
crew were concerned, but the passengers might have believed they were on
their own private yacht.
There was music for breakfast, dinner, and tea; music when the fingers
of the trombonist were frozen and when the snow fell upon the taut
surface of the big drum; and music at dawn to tell us it was Sunday, so
that you awoke imagining yourself at church. There was also a ball, and
the captain led an opening march, and the stewards stood at every point
to see that the passengers kept in line, and "rounded up" those who
tried to slip away from the procession. There were speeches, too, at all
times, and lectures and religious services, and on the last night out a
grand triumph of the _chef_, who built wonderful candy goddesses of
Liberty smiling upon the other symbolic lady who keeps watch on the
Rhine, and the band played "Dixie," which it had been told was the
national anthem, and the portrait of the German Emperor smiled down upon
us over his autograph. All this was interesting, because it was
characteristic of the Germans; it showed their childish delight in
little things, and the same simplicity of character which makes the
German soldiers who would not move out of the way of the French bullets
dance around a Christmas-tree. The American or the Englishman will not
do these things, because he has too keen a sense of the ridiculous, and
is afraid of being laughed at. So when he goes to sea he plays poker and
holds auctions on the run.
There was only one passenger on board who objected to the music. He was
from Detroit, and for the first three days remained lashed to his
steamer chair like a mummy, with nothing showing but a blue nose and
closed eyelids. The band played at his end of the deck, and owing to
the fingers of the players being frozen, and to the sudden lurches of
the ship, the harmony was sometimes destroyed. Those who had an ear for
music picked up their steamer chairs and moved to windward; but this
young man, being half dead and firmly lashed to his place, was unable to
save himself.
On the morning of the fourth day, when the concert was over and the band
had gone to thaw out, the young man suddenly sat upright and pointed his
forefinger at the startled passengers. We had generally decided that he
was dead. "The Lord knows I'm a sick man," he said, blinking his eyes
feebly; "but if I live till midnight I'll find out where they hide those
horns, and I'll drop 'em into the Gulf Stream, if it takes my dying
breath." He then fell over backwards, and did not speak again until we
reached Gibraltar.
There is something about the sight of land after one has been a week
without it which supplies a want that nothing else can fill; and it is
interesting to note how careless one is as to its name, or whether it is
pink or pale blue on the maps, or whether it is ruled by a king or a
colonial secretary. It is quite sufficient that it is land. This was
impressed upon me once, on entering New York Harbor, by a young man who
emerged from his deck cabin to discover, what all the other passengers
already knew, that we were in the upper bay. He gave a shout of ecstatic
relief and pleasure. "That," he cried, pointing to the west, "is Staten
Island, but that," pointing to the right, "is LAND."
The first land you see on going to Gibraltar is the Azores Islands. They
are volcanic and mountainous, and accompany the boat for a day and a
half; but they could be improved if they were moved farther south about
two hundred miles, as one has to get up at dawn to see the best of them.
It is quite warm by this time, and the clothes you wore in New York seem
to belong to a barbarous period and past fashion, and have become heavy
and cumbersome, and take up an unnecessary amount of room in your trunk.
[Illustration: THE MAN FROM DETROIT]
And then people tell you that there is land in sight again, and you
find how really far you are from home when you learn that it is
Portugal, and so a part of Europe, and not an island thrown up by a
volcano, or stolen or strayed from its moorings at the mainland.
Portugal is apparently a high red hill, with a round white tower on the
top of it flying signal flags. Its chief industry is the arranging of
these flags by a man. It is, on the whole, a disappointing country.
After this, everybody begins to pack and to exchange visiting-cards; and
those who are to get off at Gibraltar are pursued by stewards and
bandmasters and young men with testimonials that they want signed, and
by the weak in spirit, who, at the eleventh hour, think they will not go
on to Genoa, but will get off here and go on to Tangier, and who want
you to decide for them. And which do you think would pay best, and what
is there to see in Tangier, anyway? And as that is exactly what you are
going to find out, you cannot tell.
When I left the deck the last night out the stars were all over the
heavens; and the foremast, as it swept slowly from side to side, looked
like a black pendulum upside down marking out the sky and portioning off
the stars. And when I woke there was a great creaking of chains, and I
could see out of my port-hole hundreds of fixed lights and rows and
double rows of lamps, so that you might have thought the ship during the
night had run aground in the heart of a city.
The first sight of Gibraltar is, I think, disappointing. It means so
much, and so many lives have been given for it, and so many ships have
been sunk by its batteries, and such great powers have warred for twelve
hundred years for its few miles of stone, that its black outline against
the sky, with nothing to measure it with but the fading stars, is
dwarfed and spoiled. It is only after the sun begins to turn the lights
out, and you are able to compare it with the great ships at its base,
and you see the battlements and the mouths of cannon, and the clouds
resting on its top, that you understand it; and then when the outline of
the crouching lion, that faces all Europe, comes into relief, you
remember it is, as they say, the lock to the Mediterranean, of which
England holds the key. And even while you feel this, and are greedily
following the course of each rampart and terrace with eyes that are
tired of blank stretches of water, some one points to a low line of
mountains lying like blue clouds before the red sky of the sunrise, dim,
forbidding, and mysterious--and you know that it is Africa.
Spain, lying to the right, all green and amethyst, and flippant and gay
with white houses and red roofs, and Gibraltar's grim show of
battlements and war, become somehow of little moment. You feel that you
have known them always, and that they are as you fancied they would be.
But this other land across the water looks as inscrutable, as dark, and
as silent as the Sphinx that typifies it, and you feel that its Pillar
of Hercules still marks the entrance to the "unknown world."
Nine out of every ten of those who visit Gibraltar for the first time
expect to find an island. It ought to be, and it would be one but for a
strip of level turf half a mile wide and half a mile long which joins it
to the sunny green hills of Spain. But for this bit of land, which they
call "the Neutral Ground," Gibraltar would be an island, for it has the
Mediterranean to the east, a bay, and beyond that the hills of Spain to
the west, and Africa dimly showing fourteen miles across the sea to the
south.
[Illustration: THE ROCK FROM THE BAY]
Gibraltar has been besieged thirteen times; by Moors and by Spaniards,
and again by Moors, and again by Spaniards against Spaniards. It was
during one of these wars between two factions in Spain, in 1704, that
the English, who were helping one of the factions, took the Rock, and
were so well pleased with it that they settled there, and have remained
there ever since. If possession is nine points of the law, there was
never a place in the history of the world held with nine as obvious
points. There were three more sieges after the English took Gibraltar,
one of them, the last, continuing for four years. The English were
fighting America at the time, and rowing in the Nile, and so did not do
much towards helping General George Elliot, who was Governor of the Rock
at that time. It would appear to be, as well as one can judge from this
distance, a case of neglect on the part of the mother-country for her
little colony and her six thousand men, very much like her forgetfulness
of Gordon, only Elliot succeeded where Gordon failed (if you can
associate that word with that name), and so no one blamed the home
government for risking what would have been a more serious loss than the
loss of Calais, had Elliot surrendered, and "Gib" gone back to its
rightful owners, that is, the owners who have the one point. The history
of this siege is one of the most interesting of war stories; it is
interesting whether you ever expect to visit Gibraltar or not; it is
doubly interesting when you walk the pretty streets of the Rock to-day,
with its floating population of twenty thousand, and try to imagine the
place held by six thousand half-starved, sick, and wounded soldiers,
living at times on grass and herbs and handfuls of rice, and yet
carrying on an apparently forlorn fight for four years against the
entire army and navy of Spain, and, at the last, against the arms of
France as well.
We are apt to consider the Gibraltar of to-day as occupying the same
position to the Mediterranean as Queenstown does to the Atlantic, a
place where passengers go ashore while the mails are being taken on
board, and not so much for their interest in the place itself as to
again feel solid earth under their feet. There are passengers who will
tell you on the way out that you can see all there is to be seen there
in three hours. As a matter of fact, one can live in Gibraltar for many
weeks and see something new every day. It struck me as being more
different kinds of a place than any other spot of land I had ever
visited, and one that changed its aspect with every shifting of the
wind, and with each rising and setting of the sun. It is the
clearing-house for three most picturesque peoples--the Moors, in their
yellow slippers and bare legs and voluminous robes and snowy turbans;
the Spaniards, with romantic black capes and cloaks and red sashes, the
women with the lace mantilla and brilliant kerchiefs and pretty faces;
and, mixed with these, the pride and glory of the British army and navy,
in all the bravery of red coats and white helmets, or blue jackets, or
Highland kilts. It is a fortress as imposing as the Tower of London, a
winter resort as pretty as St. Augustine, and a seaport town of free
entry, into which come on every tide people of many nations, and ships
flying every flag.
[Illustration: A TYPE]
[Illustration: A TYPE]
Around its base are the ramparts, like a band of stone and steel; above
them the town, rising like a staircase, with houses for steps--yellow
houses, with light green blinds sticking out at different angles, and
with sloping red roofs meeting other lines of red roofs, and broken by a
carpeting of green where the parks and gardens make an opening in the
yellow front of the town, and from which rise tall palms and palmettoes,
and rows of sea-pines, and fluttering union-jacks which mark the
barracks of a regiment. Above the town is the Rock, covered with a green
growth of scrub and of little trees below, and naked and bare above,
stretching for several miles from north to south, and rearing its great
bulk up into the sky until it loses its summit in the clouds. It is
never twice the same. To-day it may be smiling and resplendent under a
warm, brilliant sun that spreads out each shade of green, and shows each
terrace and rampart as clearly as though one saw it through a glass; the
sky becomes as blue as the sea and the bay, and the white villages of
Spain seem as near to one as the red soldier smoking his pipe on the
mountings half-way up the Rock. And to-morrow the whole top of the Rock
may be lost in a thick curtain of gray clouds, and the waters of the bay
will be tossing and covered with white-caps, and the lands about
disappear from sight as though they had sunk into the sea during the
night and had left you alone on an island. At times a sunset paints the
Rock a martial red, or the moonlight softens it, and you see only the
tall palms and the graceful balconies and the gardens of plants, and
each rampart becomes a terrace and each casemate a balcony. Or at night,
when the lamps are lit, you might imagine yourself on the stage of a
theatre, walking in a scene set for _Fra Diavolo_.
There are no such streets or houses outside of stage-land. It is only in
stage cities that the pavements and streets are so conspicuously clean,
or that the hanging lamps of beaten iron-work throw such deep shadows,
or that there are such high, heavily carved Moorish doorways and
mysterious twisting stairways in the solid rock, or shops with such
queer signs, or walls plastered with such odd-colored placards--streets
where every footfall echoes, and where dark figures suddenly appear from
narrow alleyways and cry "Halt, there!" at you, and then "All's well" as
you pass by.
[Illustration: GIBRALTAR AS SEEN ACROSS THE NEUTRAL GROUND]
Gibraltar has one main street running up and clinging to the side of the
hill from the principal quay to the most southern point of the Rock.
Houses reach up to it from the first level of the ramparts, and continue
on up the hill from its other side. On this street are the bazars of the
Moors, and the English shops and the Spanish cafes, and the cathedral,
and the hotels, and the Governor's house, and every one in Gibraltar is
sure to appear on it at least once in the twenty-four hours. But the
color and tone of the street are military. There are soldiers at every
step--soldiers carrying the mail or bearing reports, or soldiers in bulk
with a band ahead, or soldiers going out to guard the North Front, where
lies the Neutral Ground, or to target practice, or to play football;
soldiers in two or threes, with their sticks under their arms, and their
caps very much cocked, and pipes in their mouths. But these make slow
progress, for there is always an officer in sight--either a boy officer
just out from England riding to the polo field near the Neutral Ground,
or a commanding officer in a black tunic and a lot of ribbons across his
breast, or an officer of the day with his sash and sword; and each of
these has to be saluted. This is an interesting spectacle, and one that
is always new. You see three soldiers coming at you with a quick step,
talking and grinning, alert and jaunty, and suddenly the upper part of
their three bodies becomes rigid, though their legs continue as before,
apparently of their own volition, and their hands go up and their pipes
and grins disappear, and they pass you with eyes set like dead men's
eyes, and palms facing you as though they were trying to learn which way
the wind was blowing. This is due, you discover, to the passing of a
stout gentleman in knickerbockers, who switches his rattan stick in the
air in reply. Sometimes when he salutes the soldier stops altogether,
and so his walks abroad are punctuated at every twenty yards. It takes
an ordinary soldier in Gibraltar one hour to walk ten minutes.
Everybody walks in the middle of the main street in Gibraltar, because
the sidewalks are only two feet wide, and because all the streets are as
clean as the deck of a yacht. Cabs of yellow wood and diligences with
jangling bells and red worsted harness gallop through this street and
sweep the people up against the wall, and long lines of goats who leave
milk in a natural manner at various shops tangle themselves up with long
lines of little donkeys and longer lines of geese, with which the local
police struggle valiantly. All of these things, troops and goats and
yellow cabs and polo ponies and dog-carts, and priests with
curly-brimmed hats, and baggy-breeched Moors, and huntsmen in pink coats
and Tommies in red, and sailors rolling along in blue, make the main
street of Gibraltar as full of variety as a mask ball.
Of the Gibraltar militant, the fortress and the key to the
Mediterranean, you can see but the little that lies open to you and to
every one along the ramparts. Of the real defensive works of the place
you are not allowed to have even a guess. The ramparts stretch all along
the western side of the rock, presenting to the bay a high shelving wall
which twists and changes its front at every hundred yards, and in such
an unfriendly way that whoever tried to scale its slippery surface at
one point would have a hundred yards of ramparts on either side of him,
from which two sides gunners and infantry could observe his efforts with
comfort and safety to themselves; and from which, when tired of watching
him slip and scramble, they could and undoubtedly would blow him into
bits. But they would probably save him the trouble of coming so far by
doing that before he left his vessel in the bay. The northern face of
the Rock--that end which faces Spain, and which makes the head of the
crouching lion--shows two long rows of teeth cut in its surface by
convicts of long ago. You are allowed to walk through these dungeons,
and to look down upon the Neutral Ground and the little Spanish town at
the end of its half-mile over the butts of great guns. And you will
marvel not so much at the engineering skill of whoever it was who
planned this defence as at the weariness and the toil of the criminals
who gave up the greater part of their lives to hewing and blasting out
these great galleries and gloomy passages, through which your footsteps
echo like the report of cannon.
[Illustration: AN ENGLISH SENTRY]
Lower down, on the outside of this mask of rock, are more ramparts,
built there by man, from which infantry could sweep the front of the
enemy were they to approach from the only point from which a land
attack is possible. The other side of the Rock, that which faces the
Mediterranean, is unfortified, except by the big guns on the very
summit, for no man could scale it, and no ball yet made could shatter
its front. To further protect the north from a land attack there is at
the base of the Rock and below the ramparts a great moat, bridged by an
apparently solid piece of masonry. This roadway, which leads to the
north gate of the fortress--the one which is closed at six each
night--is undermined, and at a word could be blown into pebbles, turning
the moat into a great lake of water, and virtually changing the Rock of
Gibraltar into an island. I never crossed this roadway without wondering
whether the sentry underneath might not be lighting his pipe near the
powder-magazine, and I generally reached the end of it at a gallop.
[Illustration: A SPANISH SENTRY]
There is still another protection to the North Front. It is only the
protection which a watch-dog gives at night; but a watch-dog is most
important. He gives you time to sound your burglar-alarm and to get a
pistol from under your pillow. A line of sentries pace the Neutral
Ground, and have paced it for nearly two hundred years. Their
sentry-boxes dot the half-mile of turf, and their red coats move
backward and forward night and day, and any one who leaves the straight
and narrow road crossing the Neutral Ground, and who comes too near,
passes a dead-line and is shot. Facing them, a half-mile off, are the
white adobe sentry-boxes of Spain and another row of sentries, wearing
long blue coats and queer little shakos, and smoking cigarettes. And so
the two great powers watch each other unceasingly across the half-mile
of turf, and say, "So far shall you go, and no farther; this belongs to
me." There is nothing more significant than these two rows of sentries;
you notice it whenever you cross the Neutral Ground for a ride in Spain.
First you see the English sentry, rather short and very young, but very
clean and rigid, and scowling fiercely over the chin strap of his big
white helmet. His shoulder-straps shine with pipe-clay and his boots
with blacking, and his arms are burnished and oily. Taken alone, he is a
little atom, a molecule; but he is complete in himself, with his food
and lodging on his back, and his arms ready to his hand. He is one of a
great system that obtains from India to Nova Scotia, and from Bermuda to
Africa and Australia; and he shows that he knows this in the way in
which he holds up his chin and kicks out his legs as he tramps back and
forward guarding the big rock at his back. And facing him, half a mile
away, you will see a tall handsome man seated on a stone, with the tails
of his long coat wrapped warmly around his legs, and with his gun
leaning against another rock while he rolls a cigarette; and then, with
his hands in his pockets, he gazes through the smoke at the sky above
and the sea on either side, and wonders when he will be paid his peseta
a day for fighting and bleeding for his country. This helps to make you
understand how six thousand half-starved Englishmen held Gibraltar for
four years against the army of Spain.
This is about all that you can see of Gibraltar as a fortress. You hear,
of course, of much more, and you can guess at a great deal. Up above,
where the Signal Station is, and where no one, not even an officer in
uniform not engaged on the works, is allowed to go, are the real
fortifications. What looks like a rock is a monster gun painted gray, or
a tree hides the mouth of another. And in this forbidden territory are
great cannon which are worked from the lowest ramparts. These are the
present triumphs of Gibraltar. Before they came, the clouds which shut
out the sight of the Rock as well as the rest of the world from its
summit rendered the great pieces of artillery there as useless in bad
weather as they are harmless in times of peace. The very elements
threatened to war against the English, and a shower of rain or a veering
wind might have altered the fortunes of a battle. But a clever man named
Watkins has invented a position-finder, by means of which those on the
lowest ramparts, well out of the clouds, can aim the great guns on the
summit at a vessel unseen by the gunners lost in the mist above, and by
electricity fire a shot from a gun a half-mile above them so that it
will strike an object many miles off at sea. It will be a very strange
sensation to the captain of such a vessel when he finds her bombarded by
shells that belch forth from a drifting cloud.
No stranger has really any idea of the real strength of this fortress,
or in what part of it its real strength lies. Not one out of ten of its
officers knows it. Gibraltar is a grand and grim practical joke; it is
an armed foe like the army in _Macbeth_, who came in the semblance of a
wood, or like the wooden horse of Troy that held the pick of the enemy's
fighting-men. What looks like a solid face of rock is a hanging curtain
that masks a battery; the blue waters of the bay are treacherous with
torpedoes; and every little smiling village of Spain has been marked
down for destruction, and has had its measurements taken as accurately
as though the English batteries had been playing on it already for many
years. The Rock is undermined and tunnelled throughout, and food and
provisions are stored away in it to last a siege of seven years.
Telephones and telegraphs, signal stations for flagging, search-lights,
and other such devilish inventions, have been planted on every point,
and only the Governor himself knows what other modern improvements have
been introduced into the bowels of this mountain or distributed behind
bits of landscape gardening on its surface.
On the 25th of February, at half-past ten in the morning, three guns
were fired in rapid succession from the top of the Rock, and the windows
shook. Three guns mean that Gibraltar is about to be attacked by a fleet
of war-ships, and that "England expects every man to do his duty." So I
went out to see him do it. Men were running through the streets trailing
their guns, and officers were galloping about pulling at their gloves,
and bodies of troops were swinging along at a double-quick, which always
makes them look as though they were walking in tight boots, and bugles
were calling, and groups of men, black and clearly cut against the sky,
were excitedly switching the air with flags from every jutting rock and
every rampart of the garrison.
[Illustration: SIGNAL STATION ON THE TOP OF THE ROCK]
Behind the ramparts, quite out of sight of the vessels in the bay, were
many hundreds of infantrymen with rifles in hand, and only waiting for a
signal to appear above the coping of the wall to empty their guns into
the boats of the enemy. The enlisted men, who enjoy this sort of play,
were pleased and interested; the officers were almost as calm as they
would be before a real enemy, and very much bored at being called out
and experimented with. The real object of the preparation for defence
that morning was to learn whether the officers at different points
could communicate with the Governor as he rode rapidly from one spot
to another. This was done by means of flags, and although the officer
who did the flagging for the Governor's party had about as much as he
could do to keep his horse on four legs, the experiment was most
successful. It was a very pretty and curious sight to see men talking a
mile away to a party of horsemen going at full gallop.
The life of a subaltern of the British army, who belongs to a smart
regiment, and who is stationed at such a post as Gibraltar, impresses
you as being as easy and satisfactory a state of existence as a young
and unmarried man could ask. He has always the hope that some day--any
day, in fact--he will have a chance to see active service, and so serve
his country and distinguish his name. And while waiting for this chance
he enjoys the good things the world brings him with a clear conscience.
He has duties, it is true, but they did not strike me as being wearing
ones, or as threatening nervous prostration. As far as I could see, his
most trying duty was the number of times a day he had to change his
clothes, and this had its ameliorating circumstance in that he each time
changed into a more gorgeous costume. There was one youth whom I saw in
four different suits in two hours. When I first noticed him he was
coming back from polo, in boots and breeches; then he was directing the
firing of a gun, with a pill-box hat on the side of his head, a large
pair of field-glasses in his hand, and covered by a black and red
uniform that fitted him like a jersey. A little later he turned up at a
tennis party at the Governor's in flannels; and after that he came back
there to dine in the garb of every evening. When the subaltern dines at
mess he wears a uniform which turns that of the First City Troop into
what looks in comparison like a second-hand and ready-made garment. The
officers of the 13th Somerset Light Infantry wore scarlet jackets at
dinner, with high black silk waistcoats bordered with two inches of gold
lace. The jackets have gold buttons sewed along every edge that presents
itself, and offer glorious chances for determining one's future by
counting "poor man, rich man, beggar-man, thief." When eighteen of these
jackets are placed around a table, the chance civilian feels and looks
like an undertaker.
Dining at mess is a very serious function in a British regiment. At
other times her Majesty's officers have a reticent air; but at dinner,
when you are a guest, or whether you are a guest or not, there is an
intent to please and to be pleased which is rather refreshing.
We have no regimental headquarters in America, and owing to our officers
seeking promotion all over the country, the regimental _esprit de corps_
is lacking. But in the English army regimental feeling is very strong;
father and son follow on in the same regiment, and now that they are
naming them for the counties from which they are recruited, they are
becoming very close corporations indeed. At mess the traditions of the
regiment come into play, and you can learn then of the actions in which
it has been engaged from the engravings and paintings around the walls,
and from the silver plate on the table and the flags stacked in the
corner.
[Illustration: CANNONS MASKED BY BUSHES]
When a man gets his company he presents the regiment with a piece of
plate, or a silver inkstand, or a picture, or something which
commemorates a battle or a man, and so the regimental headquarters are
always telling a story of what has been in the past and inspiring fine
deeds for the future. Each regiment has its peculiarity of uniform or
its custom at mess, which is distinctive to it, and which means more the
longer it is observed. Those in authority are trying to do away with
these signs and differences in equipment, and are writing themselves
down asses as they do so.
You will notice, for instance, if you are up in such things, that the
sergeants of the 13th Light Infantry wear their sashes from the left
shoulder to the right hip, as officers do, and not from the right
shoulder, as sergeants should. This means that once in a great battle
every officer of the 13th was killed, and the sergeants, finding this
out, and that they were now in command, changed their sashes to the
other shoulder. And the officers ever after allowed them to do this, as
a tribute to their brothers in command who had so conspicuously
obliterated themselves and distinguished their regiment. There are other
traditions, such as that no one must mention a woman's name at mess,
except the title of one woman, to which they rise and drink at the end
of the dinner, when the sergeant gives the signal to the band-master
outside, and his men play the national anthem, while the bandmaster
comes in, as Mr. Kipling describes him in "The Drums of the Fore and
Aft," and "takes his glass of port-wine with the orfficers." The
Sixtieth, or the Royal Rifles, for instance, wear no marks of rank at
the mess, in order to express the idea that there they are all equal.
This regiment had once for its name the King's American Rifles, and
under that name it took Quebec and Montreal, and I had placed in front
of me at mess one night a little silver statuette in the equipment of a
Continental soldier, except that his coat, if it had been colored,
would have been red, and not blue. He was dated 1768. In the mess-room
are pictures of the regiment swarming over the heights of Quebec,
storming the walls of Delhi, and running the gauntlet up the Nile as
they pressed forward to save Gordon. All of this goes to make a
subaltern feel things that are good for him to feel.
Every day at Gibraltar there is tennis, and bands playing in the
Alameda, and parades, or riding-parties across the Neutral Ground into
Spain, and teas and dinners, at which the young ladies of the place
dance Spanish dances, and twice a week the members of the Calpe Hunt
meet in Spain, and chase foxes across the worst country that any
Englishman ever rode over in pink. There are no fences, but there are
ravines and canyons and precipices, down and up and over which the horses
scramble and jump, and over which they will, if the rider leaves them
alone, bring him safely.
And if you lose the rest of the field, you can go to an old Spanish inn
like that which Don Quixote visited, with drunken muleteers in the
court-yard, and the dining-room over the stable, and with beautiful
dark-eyed young women to give you omelet and native wine and black
bread. Or, what is as amusing, you can stop in at the officer's
guard-room at the North Front, and cheer that gentleman's loneliness by
taking tea with him, and drying your things before his fire while he
cuts the cake, and the women of the party straighten their hats in
front of his glass, and two Tommies go off for hot water.
There was a very entertaining officer guarding the North Front one
night, and he proved so entertaining that neither of us heard the sunset
gun, and so when I reached the gate I found it locked, and the bugler of
the guard who take the keys to the Governor each night was sounding his
bugle half-way up the town. There was a dark object on a wall to which I
addressed all my arguments and explanations, which the object met with
repeated requests to "move on, now," in the tone of expostulation with
which a London policeman addresses a very drunken man.
[Illustration: TEA IN THE OFFICERS' QUARTERS]
I knew that if I tried to cross the Neutral Ground I would be shot at
for a smuggler; for, owing to Gibraltar's being a free port of entry,
these gentlemen buy tobacco there, and carry it home each night, or run
it across the half-mile of Neutral Ground strapped to the backs of dogs.
So I wandered back again to the entertaining officer, and he was filled
with remorse, and sent off a note of entreaty to his Excellency's
representative, to whom he referred as a D. A. A. G., and whose name, he
said, was Jones. We then went to the mess of the officers guarding the
different approaches, and these gentlemen kindly offered me their own
beds, proposing that they themselves should sleep on three chairs and a
pile of overcoats; all except one subaltern, who excused his silence by
saying diffidently that he fancied I would not care to sleep in the
fever camp, of which he had charge. I had seen the officer of the
keys pass every night, and the guards turn out to salute the keys, and I
had rather imagined that it was more or less of a form, and that the
pomp and circumstance were all there was of it. I did not believe that
the Rock was really closed up at night like a safe with a combination
lock. But I know now that it is. A note came back from the mysterious D.
A. A. G. saying I could be admitted at eleven; but it said nothing at
all about sentries, nor did the entertaining officer. Subalterns always
say "Officer" when challenged, and the sentry always murmurs, "Pass,
officer, and all's well," in an apologetic growl. But I suppose I did
not say "Officer" as I had been told to do, with any show of confidence,
for every sentry who appeared that night--and there seemed to be a
regiment of them--would not have it at all, and wanted further data, and
wanted it quick. Even if you have an order from a D. A. A. G. named
Jones, it is very difficult to explain about it when you don't know
whether to speak of him as the D. A. A. G. or as General Jones, and
especially when a young and inexperienced shadow is twisting his gun
about so that the moonlight plays up and down the very longest bayonet
ever issued by a civilized nation. They were not nice sentries, either,
like those on the Rock, who stand where you can see them, and who
challenge you drowsily, like cabmen, and make the empty streets less
lonely than otherwise.
They were, on the contrary, fierce and in a terrible hurry, and had a
way of jumping out of the shadow with a rattle of the gun and a shout
that brought nerve-storms in successive shocks. To make it worse, I had
gone over the post, while waiting for word from the D. A. A. G., to hear
the sentries recite their instructions to the entertaining officer. They
did this rather badly, I thought, the only portion of the rules, indeed,
which they seemed to have by heart being those which bade them not to
allow cows to trespass "without a permit," which must have impressed
them by its humor, and the fact that when approached within fifty yards
they were "to fire low." I found when challenged that night that this
was the only part of their instructions that I also could remember.
This was the only trying experience of my stay in Gibraltar, and it is
brought in here as a compliment to the force that guards the North
Front. For of them, and the rest of the inhabitants and officers of the
garrison, any one who visits there can only think well; and I hope when
the Rock is attacked, as it never will be, that they will all cover
themselves with glory. It never will be attacked, for the reason that
the American people are the only people clever enough to invent a way of
taking it, and they are far too clever to attempt an impossible thing.
II
TANGIER
A great many thousand years ago Hercules built the mountain of Abyla and
its twin mountain which we call Gibraltar. It was supposed to mark the
limits of the unknown world, and it would seem from casual inspection,
as I suggested in the last chapter, that it serves the same purpose to
this day. Men have crept into Africa and crept out again, like flies
over a ceiling, and they have gained much renown at Africa's expense for
having done so. They have built little towns along its coasts, and run
little rocking, bumping railroads into its forests, and dragged launches
over its cataracts, and partitioned it off among emperors and powers and
trading companies, without having ventured into the countries they
pretend to have subdued. But from Paul du Chaillu to W. A. Chanler, "the
Last Explorer," as he has been called, just how much more do we know of
Africa than did the Romans whose bridges still stand in Tangier?
The "Last Explorer" sounds well, and is distinctly a _mot_, but there
will be other explorers to go, and perhaps to return. There are still a
few things for us to learn. The Spaniards and the Pilgrim fathers
touched the unknown world of America only four hundred years ago, and
to-day any commercial traveller can tell you, with the aid of an A B C
railroad guide, the name of every town in any part of it. But Turks and
Romans and Spaniards, and, of late, English and Germans and French, have
been pecking and nibbling at Africa like little mice around a cheese,
and they are still nibbling at the rind, and know as little of the
people they "protect," and of the countries they have annexed and
colonized, as did Hannibal and Scipio. The American forests have been
turned into railroad ties and telegraph poles, and the American Indian
has been "exterminated" or taught to plough and to wear a high hat. The
cowboy rides freely over the prairies; the Indian agent cheats the
Indian--the Indian does not cheat him; the Germans own Milwaukee and
Cincinnati; the Irish rule everywhere; even the much-abused Chinaman
hangs out his red sign in every corner of the country. There is not a
nation of the globe that has not its hold upon and does not make
fortunes out of the continent of America; but the continent of Africa
remains just as it was, holding back its secret, and still content to be
the unknown world.
You need not travel far into Africa to learn this; you can find out how
little we know of it at its very shore. This city of Tangier, lying but
three hours off from Gibraltar's civilization, on the nearest coast of
Africa, can teach you how little we or our civilized contemporaries
understand of these barbarians and of their barbarous ways.
A few months since England sent her ambassador to treat with the Sultan
of Morocco; it was an untaught blackamoor opposed to a diplomat and a
gentleman, and a representative of the most civilized and powerful of
empires; and we have Stephen Bonsal's picture of this ambassador and his
suite riding back along the hot, sandy trail from Fez, baffled and
ridiculed and beaten. So that when I was in Tangier, half-naked Moors,
taking every white stranger for an Englishman, would point a finger at
me and cry, "Your Sultana a fool; the Sultan only wise." Which shows
what a superior people we are when we get away from home, and how well
the English understand the people they like to protect.
Tangier lies like a mass of drifted snow on the green hills below, and
over the point of rock on which stands its fortress, and from which
waves the square red flag of Morocco. It is a fine place spoiled by
civilization. And not a nice quality of civilization either. Back of it,
in Tetuan or Fez, you can understand what Tangier once was and see the
Moor at his best. There he lives in the exclusiveness which his religion
teaches him is right--an exclusiveness to which the hauteur of an
Englishman, and his fear that some one is going to speak to him on
purpose, become a gracious manner and suggest undue familiarity. You see
the Moor at his best in Tangier too, but he is never in his complete
setting as he is in the inland cities, for when you walk abroad in
Tangier you are constantly brought back to the new world by the presence
and abodes of the foreign element; a French shop window touches a bazar,
and a Moor in his finest robes is followed by a Spaniard in his black
cape or an Englishman in a tweed suit, for the Englishman learns nothing
and forgets nothing. He may live in Tangier for years, but he never
learns to wear a burnoose, or forgets to put on the coat his tailor has
sent him from home as the latest in fashion. The first thing which meets
your eye on entering the harbor at Tangier is an immense blue-and-white
enamel sign asking you to patronize the English store for groceries and
provisions. It strikes you as much more barbarous than the Moors who
come scrambling over the vessel's side.
[Illustration: BREAD MERCHANTS AT THE GATE]
They come with a rush and with wild yells before the little steamer has
stopped moving, and remind you of their piratical ancestors. They look
quite as fierce, and as they throw their brown bare legs over the
bulwarks and leap and scramble, pushing and shouting in apparently the
keenest stage of excitement and rage, they only need long knives between
their teeth and a cutlass to convince you that you are at the mercy
of the Barbary pirates, and not merely of hotel porters and guides.
My guide was a Moor named Mahamed. I had him about a week, or rather, to
speak quite correctly, he had me. I do not know how he effected my
capture, but he went with me, I think, because no one else would have
him, and he accordingly imposed on my good-nature. As we say a man is
"good-natured" when there is absolutely nothing else to be said for him,
I hope when I say this that I shall not be accused of trying to pay
myself a compliment. Mahamed was a tall Moor, with a fine array of
different-colored robes and coats and undercoats, and a large white
turban around his fez, which marked the fact that he was either married
or that he had made a pilgrimage to Mecca. He followed me from morning
until night, with the fidelity of a lamb, and with its sheeplike
stupidity. No amount of argument or money or abuse could make him leave
my side. Mahamed was not even picturesque, for he wore a large pair of
blue spectacles and Congress gaiters. This hurt my sense of the fitness
of things very much. His idea of serving me was to rush on ahead and
shove all the little donkeys and blind beggars and children out of my
way, at which the latter would weep, and I would have to go back and
bribe them into cheerfulness again. In this way he made me most
unpopular with the masses, and cost me a great deal in trying to buy
their favor. I was never so completely at the mercy of any one before,
and I hope he found me "intelligent, courteous, and a good linguist."