ARAB DOMESTIC INDUSTRY.
The sheik deploring the result of the day’s hunt, I expressed the
hope that we should make up for it next day; on this they were thrown
into paroxysms, and they set about the sheik, some by fair means, the
rest by foul, to prevent my doing anything save going along the main
road, or going any road except that to Dar el Baida, whither I had no
particular wish to go. Despite these difficulties, I found means to
concert privately a chase for the next day. We were to be limited to
twenty guns, and, with a good supply of beaters, to start early. In the
morning, Sheik Tibi and the other soldiers, after using every effort
to stop me, insisted on going also; thus, the sun was high before we
got a start. We drew two valleys with no better success than the day
before, expending two hours on each. Being satisfied that there was a
purpose in this, I persisted in trying further off, and being joined by
thirty or forty men from the next tribe, the oath was administered and
we proceeded. It was now a sight to see the boars, as they issued from
each of two valleys simultaneously beaten, running about, listening
and watching, starting and returning, as the roll of musketry came up
from both sides: it was like shooting hares in a well-stocked preserve,
without dogs. The scenery surpassed that of the day before. I was
now quite at home with these people, and it was only after it was
over, that we thought it might have been imprudent to start on such
an expedition, without knowing a word of their language, and not only
without, but in defiance of, the persons charged with the care of us.
The boars enjoy a state of unparalleled happiness under the fostering
shadow of Islamism and the law of Moses; a law not so observed in
ancient Judæa as in Modern Morocco, as may be seen by the denunciations
of the Prophets--the occupation of the Prodigal Son and the selection
made by the cast-out devils. These two laws have excluded from this
region domestic pigs and peopled it with wild ones.
The Arabs hold them to be transformed men and infidels; and converse
with them, interpreting into words their grunts and motions. Each Arab,
as he came up, soliloquised or addressed a curse to the carcasses,
as he would to a slaughtered doe. These notions are natural enough,
for they seem possessed of man’s reason with brute’s force. We had
commonly an alarm at day-break of boars close to the douar, and though
instantly pursued by dogs and horsemen, they managed to escape by
speed, dodging, and short turns. They move through the bushes with a
surprising facility of avoiding noise, squeezing by strength and with
their thick hides through places that appeared utterly impassable.
They get over everything, through everything, and lie as close under
cover as they are alert when up. In starting for a chase, the boys
commence by plaiting the rush-like palm leaves into a sling, for it is
only by stones that they can start them. No pigs are fed like these.
They have the run of the forests of cork, producing the bellota and
the palmetto-root: they prefer, however, the potato-like root of the
aram, which is called _yerni_, and grows generally in the bunches of
the palmetto. In substance it is like a milky turnip, of a sweetish
and mawkish flavour. Next to this they feed on the narcissus, the
plant of which is called _bugareg_, and the root _bililouse_. They
like very much the _loto_, of which I have yet to speak, and therefore
deserve the name of lotofagoi. It is called _folilla_. Their well-known
predilection for _turfel_--truffles--would be gratified in the extreme,
were it not that the taste of the Arab coincides with theirs. Every
square yard contains these plants, and when the vegetation is dried up,
these roots remain in the ground fresh and succulent. No wonder, then,
that they prosper, with free quarters and full commons.
The tribes of the Tahel are wood-destroyers. They consume constantly,
and never plant. A portion of their fuel is brushwood; but still the
olive, the oak, and the arar, the remnants of primeval forests, daily
disappear. Around Rabat, not a tree is to be seen; yet the firewood is
the roots which are dug out of the plain.
The copses, woods, and forests of the cork-tree, which I have
traversed, will have disappeared in a very few years. This, however,
is the effect of stripping them of their bark for exportation. It was
saddening to pass through these groves, where the ancient patriarch of
the forest was circled by the scalping-knife, which did not spare even
the young promise by his side; and, as if in savage ruthlessness, and
not blinded avarice, they sought to ensure the decay of the tree. They
had stripped the bark only to the height of a man, neglecting the rest.
They seek the bark only for tanning. The cork stripped off was lying
rotting around. The cork may be taken from the tree, without injury, as
it covers the real bark through which the sap runs. This the Spaniards
never touch.
Four years ago, this speculation was introduced by a French merchant.
He offered 4,000 dollars for the liberty of exportation, besides
four per cent. duty. The farm has risen this year to 25,000 dollars.
The Arabs seemed shocked at this work, but avoided the subject with
apparent uneasiness, whenever it was introduced. I asked them why
they did not plant trees for their children, as they were constantly
destroying those that their fathers had left? The answer was, “It is
not the custom; if we planted them there would be nobody to watch them,
and they would be destroyed.”
At present, large districts are destitute of douars from the deficiency
of fuel. A considerable portion of the country I have passed over
will soon be in the same condition, unless by the reduction of the
population the forests are again allowed to spread. The extent of the
change within a century is marked by the extinction of wild beasts.
Travellers, a century ago, narrate that they did not dare to pass the
night out of a douar for the lions and panthers. Reading these accounts
enables one to understand how the people of Palestine were not to be
driven out before the Jews in one month or in one year, lest the beasts
of the field should multiply against them. In the times of the Romans,
the lions and panthers must have been as numerous as are now the
boars.[1]
The chief lady of the douar was too busy for ceremony;--she left that
department to her husband. She was first lieutenant. But one evening,
as we were returning to the douar, she signified that she had something
to say, and conducting me into the tent, made me sit down, and, seating
herself opposite, said, “Christian,--since the wives and daughters
of your country’s sheiks neither cook nor weave, nor make butter,
nor look after the guests or sheep, what do they do?” Having already
avowed that the greatest sheik in the English country had not in his
tent or in his house a spindle or a loom, I explained how our ladies
occupied themselves. She shook her head, and said, “It is not good;”
but added, after a pause, “Are your women happier than we?” I answered,
“Neither of you would take the life of the other. But when I tell my
countrywomen about you, they will be glad to hear, and they will not
say, 'it is not good.’” “Christian,” she said, “what will you tell of
me?” I answered, “I will say I have seen the wife of an Arab Sheik, and
the mistress of an Arab tent, such as we read of in the writings of
old,[2] such as are the models held up to our young maidens; such as we
listen to only in songs or see in dreams.”
Had a voice spoken from the earth, I could not have been more
startled. It was Nature saying to Art, “What is thy worth?” What do
we know of the happiness and the uses that belong to the drudgeries
of life? Our harvest is of the briers and thorns of a spirit uneasy
and over-wrought. Here are no changes in progress--no revolutions that
threaten--no theories at war--no classes that hate--and why? The
household works. There is no subdivision of labour--the household,
not the man, is the mint of the state. It is so by its work, its
varying cares, and interchanging toil. These impose discipline,
nurture affection, knit and fortify that unit. Take away these cares,
this industry, this dexterity, this power of standing alone, and what
will--what can--a “home” become, save a crib to sleep in, with a
trough to feed at, supplied from the butcher’s cart and the huckster’s
stall? Take from the household its industrial character, and you take
away its social charm, and its public worth. You exchange domestic
industry for political economy--that is, the fictitious evils which it
classifies: for habits you substitute laws, that is, cumbrous mockery:
for happiness, refinement, that is, pretence:--and you become possessed
of the gifts of fortune--the few at least who draw the prizes, only to
lose the value, of life.
The change in our manners is producing, no doubt, an alteration in
the position as well as in the happiness of women. From my first
acquaintance with the East, I was struck with the erroneous notions
which we entertain regarding the state of the sex there. I could not
resist the evidence of their occupying relatively a higher station,
and I perceived that the difference depended upon the greater strength
of the family tie. I find in an official French work[3] my proposition
strengthened.
“In all the Sahara, the fabrication of stuffs is exclusively the
work of the women. The men apply themselves to the culture of the
date-trees. It has been already shown that in the movements and
expeditions, the women have their share equally allotted to them with
the men. Thus, in the produce of the labour of the Sahara, that of
the women amounts to one-half. In the intervals of their necessary
household occupations, they find time to contribute to the common
riches an equal quantity with the men. This is a fact which it appears
to us worthy of being placed in evidence, because it is impossible
that it should remain without influence on the condition of the female
sex. The inutility of the occupations in which they are engaged almost
everywhere else, explains perhaps, to a certain degree, and excuses
the state of dependence in which they are placed, and the disregard of
which they are the object; but where by the nature of the occupations
they are placed upon a level equal with that of man, he must cease
to regard himself as the sole chief of the domestic hearth, and be
prepared to share the family sovereignty with his companion. It is
certain that in the Sahara the merit of a woman is measured above all
by her talents and dexterity.”
In Egypt all things were consecrated, and then displayed in types. The
successive labours (as even to these days in Africa) were announced
from the sanctuary, accompanied by sacrifices and processions, and
amidst the richness of their ceremonials, and the pomp of their
temples. The changes of the seasons which they announced, appeared
to flow from their directing power, and the labours undertaken to be
the fruit of their providential care. Before calendars were printed,
all field labours had to be determined by astronomy, and especially
in the valley of the Nile, which was subject to disappear under a
deluge, and whose fertility consisted in the rise and duration of the
flood. Placing ourselves in the soft and yielding, the unlearned and
unprejudiced embryo of society; man groping his way, fearful to stray,
yet eager to advance, what more natural than a scientific priesthood
and a symbolical worship? The Greeks, copying these fruitful symbols,
sacrificed purpose and usefulness to grace. The name of Moses, we are
informed in Scripture, means _saved from the water_. The Muses was the
same word: nine months in Egypt are _saved from the waters_--these are
the Muses. Each had its festival, and the symbol of its occupation.
There were three other similar--these are the Graces--they are admitted
by the most learned Hellenists to be water-nymphs;--together they make
up the year. Here, then, we have the homeliest occupations the basis of
the religious pomps of Egypt, and of the mythology and art of Greece;
the distribution of these works filled up the year, combined field and
in-door labour, and linked the community, while furnishing the charm of
life.
The plough, the yoke, “The invention of gods and the occupation
of heroes;” are the loom, the spindle, and distaff of less noble
parentage? You sever the distaff and the plough, the spindle and the
yoke, and you get factories and poor-houses, credit and panics--two
hostile notions, agricultural and commercial. Poetry becomes politics,
patriotism faction; and a light-hearted and contented people rusts into
clowns or sharpens into knaves.
I made, amongst the Arabs, the discovery that home industry was the
secret of the permanency of their society. I made, on subsequently
visiting the Highlands, another, namely, that _home-made stuffs are the
cheapest_. I refer, of course, to the common clothing of the labouring
population. The comparison cannot be instituted where the habit
has been extinguished; for on the one hand, the implements and the
dexterity are wanting; on the other, fashion has set another way, and
new habits have arisen, adjusted to the articles and stuffs that have
been introduced. In the Highlands, however, the comparison is easy, and
I speak after thorough examination, and with perfect certainty, when
I say that a family clothed by its own homework, as compared with a
family which buys its clothes at the shop, saves one-third. Of course,
in the former case, no cotton will be used, and home-bred wool and
home-grown flax will be the staple.
The change in this respect is generally deplored; but it is considered
as inevitable, it being the result of cheapness, no hand-labour being
able to stand against machinery. But the heavy charges are not for
the operation but for the capital engaged, and the numerous transfers
and profits. Home-spinning _costs nothing_.[4] Twenty pounds of wool
converted unobtrusively into the yearly clothing of a labourer’s
family, makes no show; but bring it to market, send it to the factory,
bring it thence to broker, send it to dealer, and it will represent
commercial operations and apparent capital to the amount of twenty
times its value, and costs the labourer, when returned to him, twice
as much as it would cost him money in dyeing, spinning, weaving, &c.
The working class is thus amerced to support a wretched factory
population, a parasitical, shopkeeping class, and a fictitious,
commercial, monetary, and financial system. The landlord, for his
share, pays five shillings per acre poors-rates. And all this is the
result, not of cheapness, but delusion. The people of England were
better clothed and fed than at present, when there were no commerce
and no factories. At this moment, after exhausting human ingenuity,
they are returning to domestic labour, as a means of remedying the
evils of Ireland!
Hallam has admitted that in those times which we look back on with
pity, the labourer received twice as much as at present for his labour.
This is a terrible blow and a fearful avowal. Mr. Macaulay, on the
contrary, “sees nothing but progress, hears of nothing but decay.” He
must have transposed the two senses, or carefully selected the spots
for indulging in their use: if, indeed, by progress he means approach
towards a fair remuneration for labour, and by decay a falling away
from just judgment in important concerns. Or is it his purpose to cover
Hallam’s indiscretion?--“They say that in former times the people were
better off. The time will come that they will say the same of this.”
If we be in a state of progress, those who speak thus must be very
foolish, and if the proposition deserved notice it required refutation.
The Arab tent, without our waking follies, presents to us the reality
of our dreams. Property has there its value, wealth its honour, labour
its reward. On the one side, the fruits of wisdom without effort, on
the other the toil of the understanding without profit.
But the Arab woman asked, “Are your women happier than we?” The
European lady would be shocked at the bare possibility of comparison.
She shrinks from domestic occupation, yet is she not able to expel
nature, so as to despise Nausicaa and Naomi. We cannot refuse to bow
before the shades of the heroic or patriarchal times--our nature
acknowledges Abraham or Alcinous. Yet, if our condition be that of
refinement, how contemptible must be Tanaquil and her distaff, Penelope
and her loom?
An English lady, who had the means of comparison, has not hesitated to
assert that between an Eastern and an European household, the balance
of happiness leans to the side of the former; and in the Eastern
household it is certainly the women who have the larger share--who are
the idols, and who possess authority such as belongs not to our courts,
and affections on the part of those under their sway which belong not
even to our dreams. The most touching words of the wisest of men are
the description of the mistress of a household. It is an Arab woman he
describes.
“Look at the hand of man! The best gift of Providence! What so perfect
in mechanism, what so beautiful in form? Is it not given for work, and
ought not that work to be for the service of those we love? Can we omit
that use without the sacrifice of more than words can tell? Let not any
one who follows the picture disturb the effort of his own imagination,
to fill it up by thinking of the possibility of carrying it into
effect. Obstacles arise at every point. Our set habits all point the
other way. Julia could work for her husband because there was then a
noble and an antique costume. An empress, she could summon about her
her handmaidens, because there was a formula of ceremony which enabled
all ranks to associate without derogation or familiarity. Then there
was the hall to assemble in. 'The plant,’ still stood in every house.
Because all this is gone, are we not to count the loss? If we cannot
restore, let us not mistake. If we cannot return, let us not hurry
on--in the wrong direction. It is something to know whither we are
going, when the speed is the result of our own will.
“Nations are not changed by time or accident--they change themselves.
Progress of society--march of intellect! Good heavens! we can utter
such trash and call ourselves reasonable beings: as well speak of the
justice of a steam-engine, or the virtue of a rocket. What need to
examine their state;--their words suffice. When the phrases have gone
mad, what can be in order?
“It is something in the midst of empires crumbling to the earth and
civilization gasping for breath and struggling with itself for life, to
point to the permanency of single tribes, who have never reasoned, but
who have simple habits; and to be able to say to the wildly-frantic or
to the meekly-deluded, ‘Christians, ye are incorrigible.’”
Such were the concluding words of a series of articles by M. Blacque,
which appeared in the _Moniteur Ottoman_, in 1834. Since then fifteen
years--barren, save in convulsions such as many centuries have not
witnessed before--have justified his judgment on Europe’s condition,
and his anticipations of her fate. M. Odillon Barrot, his cousin, on
one occasion said that had he returned, he “would have played a great
part in France.” I answered, “He would have made France play a worthy
one.” He was offered the highest offices in the Russian Government, and
on refusing them was persecuted _by his own_. The Turkish Government
then adopted him, and he was poisoned while on his way to England.
The incidents of his life and death, no less than the passages left
by his pen, will serve at a future time, perhaps, to illustrate that
chimera with a brain of cobwebs and a heart of mud, which is called
civilization, and which we are pleased to designate as the child of
science and the parent of corruption.
But I do not speak of “civilization,” as an _entity_. It will be found
in no classical writer, Greek or Roman, English or French, German or
Italian. It is a word which belongs to us,--exclusively to us; let us
be either proud or conscious--its invention must be either a merit or a
shame.
_What is it?_ It is no standard. We have the words “excellence,”
and “perfection.” It is no description of a particular people, for
it neither does nor can describe or define. Its own sense has to
be defined. Whoever uses the word, conjures up to correspond with
it an idea of some aggregate condition, which never can have the
same parts in any two speakers’ minds, or in the mind of the same
speaker at any two moments. It is an unknown quantity, like _x_ in
algebra; but instead of concluding the operation by finding out its
value, we commence the proposition by supposing it known. These
are the reasons why you do not find it in any classical writer.
These are the reasons why it has been received as a discovery for
this generation. It facilitates talk without meaning, is a cloak
for ignorance and pretence, and covers, by an apparent “grasp of
intellect,” the shrinking from intellectual effort, which consists
in getting possession of the instruments we use, and in fathoming
the meaning and assuring ourselves of the accuracy of the terms we
employ. It is made up of things that have no ratio--virtue and science,
wealth and political order; so also, vice, ignorance, poverty, and
discontent--each of these must be found in it: to employ it logically,
you must class plus and minus quantities and rate each in decimals.
So in one country there would be so many degrees of positive, in
another so many of negative civilization. If you cannot do this, you
use an instrument that is necessarily false; the whole field of your
intellectual operation must be, as it is, reduced to that condition in
which our buildings, railways, and accounts would be, if arithmeticians
and engineers were to create an elementary sign of number, the value of
which was uncertain, and might be mistaken for an 8 or a 9. It is the
case, not of an error of opinion, but of false process, which renders
it impossible to be right. It is not opinions, but words, that ruin
states. Should a sane people occupy Europe after the Gothic race has
been put down or swept away, the title of M. Guizot’s great work will
suffice for the history of times distinguished at once by a fatuity
that cannot reason,[5] and an activity that will not rest. Alas for
man, if such things as we have seen since the conversation in the Arab
tent, which prompted these reflections, were the fruit of the proper
use of his faculties! Alas for folly too, if, with such men for its
apostles, institutions could endure or nations prosper!
[1] When the Romans first saw lions and panthers,
they called them African rats (_Mures Africanos_).
Pliny tells us, that Q. Scævola, when edile, first
exhibited lions in the arena. Sylla exhibited one
hundred; Pompey six hundred; Cæsar four hundred.
[2] “And all the women that were wise-hearted did
spin with their hands, and brought that which they had
spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and
of fine linen. And all the women whose hearts stirred
them up in wisdom, spun goats’ hair.”--_Exodus_ xxxv.
25, 26.
[3] Exploration scientifique d’Algérie.
[4] The spinning-wheel of the Highlands is one of
the most remarkable inventions. That formerly used in
England, and still lingering where here and there a
housewife has sense to say, “I cannot _afford_ to buy
in the shops stockings for my family,” was like that
used now in the East, and anciently figured in Egypt. A
wheel was turned by one hand, whilst with the other the
wool, cotton, or flax was prepared for the spindle: as
each portion was twisted the wheel was reversed, so as
to run it on the spindle; but in the _coil_ the thread
passes through an orifice in the axis of the spindle,
and is then carried by a bar to be distributed over the
_pirn_. The wheel runs always on, and when yielded by
the fingers, passes to the coil. Both hands are free
for the work. The wheel being turned by a treddle, it
is, compared to other spinning, as the delving of the
Basque provinces to all other methods of culture, and
performs at least twice as much work.
[5] Yet in M. Guizot’s organ such a sentence as the
following could be pronounced on “civilization,” and
such a verdict given for “barbarism.” “Amongst us, the
intelligence and the moral sense developed to excess,
are troubled with the habit of judging of particular
facts through the medium of general ideas, and more or
less complicated systems. Among the Arabs, reason is in
its simplicity, but also in all its primitive clearness
and rectitude: the idea of what is just and what is
unjust is always clear and sure.”--_L’Epoque_, April
11, 1846.