IN THE ARGAN FOREST
Life, even at its greatest and best, may be compared to a froward
child, who must be humoured and played with till he falls asleep, and
then the care is over.
--_Goldsmith._
Early morning found the Tuesday market in full swing, and the town of
Hanchen already astir in honour of the occasion. To realise the importance
of the weekly gathering, it is well to remember that a market in the
country here is the only substitute for the bazaar of the towns. Every
douar within a ten-mile radius of Hanchen sends men and women to the
Tuesday market to buy and sell. So it befell that the hillside slope,
which was bare on the previous afternoon, hummed now like a hive, and was
well nigh as crowded. Rough tents of goats' or camels'-hair cloth
sheltered everything likely to appeal to the native mind and
resources,--tea, sugar, woollen and cotton goods, pottery, sieves,
padlocks, and nails being to all appearance the goods most sought after by
the country Moor. Quite a brisk demand for candles prevailed; they were
highly-coloured things, thick at the base and tapering to the wick. There
was a good sale too for native butter, that needed careful straining
before it could be eaten with comfort, and there were eggs in plenty,
fetching from twopence to threepence the dozen, a high price for Morocco,
and brought about by the export trade that has developed so rapidly in the
last few years. For the most part the traders seemed to be Berbers or of
evident Berber extraction, being darker and smaller than the Arabs, and in
some cases wearing the dark woollen outer garment, with its distinctive
orange-coloured mark on the back. Women and little children took no small
part in the market, but were perhaps most concerned with the sale of the
chickens that they brought from their homes, tied by the legs in bundles
without regard to the suffering entailed. The women did rather more than a
fair share of porters' work too. Very few camels were to be seen, but I
noticed one group of half a dozen being carefully fed on a cloth, because,
like all their supercilious breed, they were too dainty to eat from the
ground. They gurgled quite angrily over the question of precedence. A
little way from the tents in which hardware was exposed for sale, bread
was being baked in covered pans over a charcoal fire fanned by bellows,
while at the bottom of the hill a butcher had put up the rough tripod of
wooden poles, from which meat is suspended. The slaughter of sheep was
proceeding briskly. A very old Moor was the official slaughter-man, and he
sat in the shade of a wall, a bloody knife in hand, and conversed gravely
with villagers of his own age. When the butcher's assistants had brought
up three or four fresh sheep and stretched them on the ground, the old man
would rise to his feet with considerable effort, cut the throats that
were waiting for him very cleanly and expeditiously, and return to his
place in the shade, while another assistant spread clean earth over the
reeking ground. Some of the sheep after being dressed were barbecued.
I saw many women and girls bent under the weight of baskets of charcoal,
or firewood, or loads of hay, and some late arrivals coming in heavily
burdened in this fashion were accompanied by their husband, who rode at
ease on a donkey and abused them roundly because they did not go quickly
enough. Mules and donkeys, with fore and hind leg hobbled, were left in
one corner of the market-place, to make up in rest what they lacked in
food. Needless to say that the marketing was very brisk, but I noted with
some interest that very little money changed hands. Barter was more common
than sale, partly because the Government had degraded its own currency
until the natives were fighting shy of it, and partly because the owners
of the sheep and goats were a company of true Bedouins from the extreme
South. These Bedouins were the most interesting visitors to the Tuesday
market, and I was delighted when one of them recognised Salam as a friend.
The two had met in the days when an adventurous Scot set up in business at
Cape Juby in the extreme South, where I believe his Majesty Lebaudy the
First is now king.
The Saharowi was an exceedingly thin man, of wild aspect, with flowing
hair and scanty beard. His skin was burnt deep brown, and he was dressed
in a blue cotton garment of guinea cloth made in simplest fashion. He was
the chief of a little party that had been travelling for two months with
faces set toward the North. He reminded Salam of Sidi[51] Mackenzie, the
Scot who ruled Cape Juby, and how the great manager, whose name was known
from the fort to Tindouf, had nearly poisoned him by giving him bread to
eat when he was faint with hunger. These true Bedouins live on milk and
cheese, with an occasional piece of camel or goat flesh, and a rare taste
of mutton. When Salam's friend came starving to Cape Juby, Sidi Mackenzie
had given him bread. The hungry man ate some and at once became violently
ill, his stomach could not endure such solid fare. Having no milk in the
fort, they managed to keep him alive on rice-water. It would appear that
the Saharowi can easily live on milk for a week, and with milk and cheese
can thrive indefinitely, as indeed could most other folk, if they cared to
forswear luxury and try.
[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO ARGAN FOREST]
The little party was travelling with some hundreds of sheep and goats,
which were being tended a little way off by the children, and, large
though their flocks seemed, they were in truth sadly reduced by the
drought that had driven one and all to the North. The Saharowi explained
to Salam that all the wandering Arabs were trekking northwards in search
of land that had seen the rain; and that their path was strewn with the
skeletons of animals fallen by the way. These nomads carried their wives
and little ones, together with tents and household impedimenta, on the
camels, and walked on foot with the grown children in charge of the
flocks. The sheep they had sold to the butcher were in fair condition, and
fetched from four to five shillings in English money, or the equivalent of
this sum in goods, for when a Saharowi approaches civilised lands he is
generally in need of some of the products of civilisation, or thinks he
is, though, at need, he manages excellently well without them.
Among the miscellaneous gathering that the Tuesday market had attracted to
Hanchen I noticed a small company of acrobats from the Sus, and a medicine
man of fierce aspect, who sat by himself under a rough tent, muttering
charms and incantations, and waiting for Allah to send victims. This
wonder-worker had piercing eyes, that seemed to examine the back of your
head, long matted hair and a beard to match. He wore a white djellaba and
a pair of new slippers, and was probably more dangerous than any disease
he aided and abetted.
For the amusement of the people who did not care for acrobatic feats and
stood in no need of the primitive methods of the physician, there was a
story-teller, who addressed a somewhat attenuated circle of phlegmatic
listeners, and a snake-charmer who was surrounded by children. Sidi ben
Aissa undoubtedly kept the snakes--spotted leffas from the Sus--from
hurting his follower, but not even the saint could draw _floos_ from poor
youngsters whose total wealth would probably have failed to yield
threepence to the strictest investigator. Happily for them the charmer was
an artist in his way; he loved his work for its own sake, and abated no
part of his performance, although the reward would hardly buy him and his
assistant a meal of mutton and bread at their labour's end. The boys of
Hanchen were doing brisk business in the brass cases of cartridges that
had been fired on the previous day, and without a doubt the story of the
wonders of a repeating gun lost nothing in the telling.
[Illustration: THE SNAKE-CHARMER]
There was no interval for rest when the hours of greatest heat came round.
Late arrivals who travelled in on mule- or donkey-back renewed business
when it slackened, and brought fresh goods to be sold or exchanged. The
"Sons of Lions" had broken up the market at Sidi el Muktar on the previous
Friday before it was properly concluded, and many natives, disappointed
there, had come out to Hanchen to do their business, until there seemed to
be nothing in any stall that lacked buyers. Even the old man who had a
heap of scrap-iron when the market opened had sold every piece of it by
four o'clock, though it would have puzzled a European to find any use for
such rubbish. The itinerant mender of slippers was hard at work with three
young lads, and I never saw any one of the party idle. Hawks and corbies
fluttered over the butcher's ground, and I noticed a vulture in the deep
vault of the sky. Pariah dogs would clear every bit of refuse from the
ground before another day dawned, and in their nasty fashion would serve
their country, for the weather was very hot and the odours were
overpowering. Flies covered all unprotected meat until it ceased to look
red, and the stall of the seller of sweetmeats was a study in black and
white: black when the swarms settled, and white for a brief moment when he
switched them off with his feathery bamboo brush. Yet, in spite of the
many difficulties under which trade was carried on, one could not help
feeling that buyers and sellers alike were enjoying themselves hugely. The
market did more than help them to make a living. It was at once their
club, their newspaper, and their theatre, and supplied the one recreation
of lives that--perhaps only to European seeming--were tedious as a
twice-told tale.
Here the village folk were able to keep themselves posted in the country's
contemporary history, for traders had come from all points of the compass,
and had met men at other markets who, in their turn, brought news from
places still more remote. Consequently you might learn in Hanchen's
Tuesday market what the Sultan was doing in Fez, and how the Rogui was
occupied in Er-Riff. French penetration in the far-off districts of no
man's land beyond Tafilalt was well-known to these travelling market-folk;
the Saharowi had spoken with the heads of a caravan that had come with
slaves from Ghadames, by way of the Tuat, bound for Marrakesh. Resting by
day and travelling by night, they had passed without challenge through the
French lines. A visitor knowing Arabic and Shilha, and able to discount
the stories properly, might have had a faithful picture of Morocco as its
own people see it, had he been admitted to join the weather-worn, hardy
traders who sat complacently eyeing their diminished store towards the
close of day. Truth is nowhere highly esteemed in Morocco,[52] and the
colouring superimposed upon most stories must have destroyed their
original hue, but it served to please the Moors and Berbers who, like the
men of other countries one knows, have small use for unadorned facts.
Perhaps the troubles that were reported from every side of the doomed
country accounted for the professional story-teller's thin audience. By
the side of tales that had some connection with fact the salt of his
legends lost its savour.
[Illustration: IN CAMP]
Towards evening the crowd melted away silently, as it had come. A few
mules passed along the road to Mogador, the Bedouin and his company moved
off in the direction of Saffi, and the greater part of the traders turned
south-east to M'touga, where there was a Thursday market that could be
reached in comfort. Hanchen retired within its boundaries, rich in the
proceeds of the sale of fodder, which had been in great demand throughout
the day. Small companies of boys roamed over the market-place, seeking to
snap up any trifles that had been left behind, just as English boys will
at the Crystal Palace or Alexandra Park, after a firework display. The
Moorish youngsters had even less luck than their English brethren, for in
Morocco, where life is simple and men need and have little, everything has
its use, and a native throws nothing away. The dogs, eager to forestall
the vultures, were still fighting among themselves for the offal left
by the butcher, when the villagers, who had come to take a late cup of tea
with Salam and M'Barak, resumed their slippers, testified to the Unity of
Allah, and turned to ascend Hanchen's steep hill.
Among the stories circulated in the Tuesday market was one to the effect
that a lion had come down from the Atlas, and after taking toll of the
cattle belonging to the douars on its road, had been shot at the western
end of the forest. This tale was told with so much circumstance that it
seemed worth inquiry, and I found in Mogador that a great beast had indeed
come from the hills and wrought considerable harm; but it was a leopard,
not a lion. It may be doubted whether lions are to be found anywhere north
of the Atlas to-day, though they were common enough in times past, and one
is said to have been shot close to Tangier in the middle of last century.
If they still exist it is in the farthest Atlas range, in the country of
the Beni M'gild, a district that cannot be approached from the west at
all, and in far lands beyond, that have been placed under observation
lately by the advance-columns of the French Algerian army, which does not
suffer from scruples where its neighbour's landmarks are concerned. Most
of the old writers gave the title of lion or tiger to leopards, panthers,
and lemurs; indeed, the error flourishes to-day.
[Illustration: A COUNTRYMAN]
On the road once again, I found myself wondering at the way in which
British sportsmen have neglected the Argan Forest. If they had to reach it
as we did, after long days and nights in a country that affords little
attraction for sportsmen, it would be no matter for wonder that they stay
away. But the outskirts of the forest can be reached from Mogador at the
expense of a five-mile ride across the miniature Sahara that cuts off Sidi
M'godol's city from the fertile lands, and Mogador has a weekly service of
steamers coming direct from London by way of the other Moorish ports. No
part of the forest is preserved, gun licenses are unknown, and the woods
teem with game. Stories about the ouadad or moufflon may be disregarded,
for this animal is only found in the passes of the Atlas Mountains, miles
beyond the forest's boundaries. But, on the other hand, the wild boar is
plentiful, while lynx, porcupine, hyæna, jackal, and hare are by no means
rare. Sand-grouse and partridge thrive in large quantities. There are
parts of the forest that recall the Highlands of Scotland, though the
vegetation is richer than any that Scotland can show, and in these places,
unknown save to a very few, the streams are full of trout, and the otter
may be hunted along the banks. The small quantity and poor quality of
native guns may be held to account for the continual presence of birds and
beasts in a part of the world that may not fairly be deemed remote, and
where, save in times of stress, a sportsman who will treat the natives
with courtesy and consideration may be sure of a hearty welcome and all
the assistance he deserves. Withal, no man who has once enjoyed a few days
in the Argan Forest can sincerely regret Europe's neglect of it: human
nature is not unselfish enough for that.
The ride through the last part of the forest was uneventful. Argan,
kharob, and lotus, with the help of a few of the "arar" or gum sandarac
trees, shut off the view to the right and left. Below them dwarf-palm,
aloe, cactus, and sweet broom made a dense undergrowth, and where the
woodland opened suddenly the ground was aflame with flowers that recalled
England as clearly as the cuckoo's note. Pimpernel, convolvulus,
mignonette, marigold, and pansy were English enough, and in addition to
these the ox-daisies of our meadows were almost as common here. Many
companies of the true Bedouins passed us on the road, heralded by great
flocks of sheep and goats, the sheep pausing to eat the tops of the
dwarf-palms, the goats to climb the low-lying argan trees, while their
owners stayed to ask about the water supply and the state of the country
beyond.
Though we might consider ourselves far removed from civilisation, these
Bedouins felt that they were all too near it. The change from their desert
land, with its few and far-scattered oases, to this country where there
was a douar at the end of every day's journey, was like a change from the
country to the town. They could not view without concern a part of the
world in which men wore several garments, ate bread and vegetables, and
slept under cover in a walled village, and one wild fellow, who carried a
very old flint-lock musket, lamented the drought that had forced them from
their homes to a place so full of men. So far as I was able to observe the
matter, the Berber muleteers of El Arbi bel Hadj ben Haidah looked with
great scorn upon these Bedouins, and their contempt was reciprocated. In
the eyes of the Berbers these men were outcasts and "eaters of sand," and
in the eyes of the Bedouins the muleteers were puling, town-bred slaves,
who dared not say their right hands were their own.
Perhaps the difficulty in the way of a proper understanding was largely
physical. The Berbers believe they came to Morocco from Canaan, forced out
of Palestine by the movement of the Jews under Joshua. They settled in the
mountains of the "Far West," and have never been absorbed or driven out by
their Arab conquerors. Strong, sturdy, temperate men, devoid of
imagination, and of the impulse to create or develop an artistic side to
their lives, they can have nothing in common with the slenderly built,
far-seeing Arab of the plains, who dreams dreams and sees visions all the
days of his life. Between Salam and the Bedouins, on the other hand, good
feeling came naturally. The poor travellers, whose worldly wealth was ever
in their sight--a camel or two, a tent with scanty furniture, and a few
goats and sheep--had all the unexplored places of the world to wander in,
and all the heavens for their canopy. That is the life the Arabs love, and
it had tempted Salam many hundreds of miles from his native place, the
sacred city of Sheshawan, on the border of Er-Riff. The wandering instinct
is never very far from any of us who have once passed east of Suez, and
learned that the highest end and aim of life is not to live in a town,
however large and ugly, and suffer without complaining the inevitable
visits of the tax collector.
Our tent was set for the night in a valley that we reached by a path
half-buried in undergrowth and known only to the head muleteer. It was a
spot far removed from the beaten tracks of the travellers. In times past a
great southern kaid had set his summer-house there: its skeleton, changed
from grey to pink in the rosy light of sun-setting, stood before us, just
across a tiny stream fringed by rushes, willows, and oleanders. When the
Court Elevated by Allah left Marrakesh for the north some years ago, the
sorely-tried natives had risen against their master, they had captured and
plundered his house, and he had been fortunate in getting away with a
whole skin. Thereafter the tribesmen had fought among themselves for the
spoils of war, the division of the china and cutlery accounting for
several deaths. All the land round our little camp had been a garden, a
place famous for roses and jessamine, verbena and the geraniums that grow
in bushes, together with countless other flowers, that make the garden of
Sunset Land suggest to Moors the beauties of the paradise that is to come.
Now the flowers that had been so carefully tended ran wild, the boar
rooted among them, and the porcupine made a home in their shade. As
evening closed in, the wreck of the great house became vague and shadowy,
a thing without outline, the wraith of the home that had been. Grey owls
and spectral bats sailed or fluttered from the walls. They might have been
past owners or servitors who had suffered metamorphosis. The sight set me
thinking of the mutual suspicions of the Bedouins and the Susi traders,
the raiding of Sidi el Muktar, the other signs of tribal fighting that had
been apparent on the road, the persecution of the Moor by his protected
fellow-subjects,--in short, the whole failure of the administration to
which the ruin that stood before me seemed to give fitting expression.
This house had not stood, and, after all, I thought Morocco was but a
house divided against itself.
[Illustration: MOONLIGHT]
In the face of all the difficulties and dangers that beset the state, the
Sultan's subjects are concerned only with their own private animosities.
Berber cannot unite with Moor, village still wars against village, each
province is as a separate kingdom, so far as the adjacent province is
concerned. As of old, the kaids are concerned only with filling their
pockets; the villagers, when not fighting, are equally engrossed in saving
some small portion of their earnings and taking advantage of the inability
of the central Government to collect taxes. They all know that the land is
in confusion, that the Europeans at the Court are intriguing against its
independence. In camp and market-place men spread the news of the French
advance from the East. Yet if the forces of the country could be
organised,--if every official would but respond to the needs of the
Government and the people unite under their masters,--Morocco might still
hold Europe at bay, to the extent at least of making its subjection too
costly and difficult a task for any European Government to undertake.
If Morocco could but find its Abd el Kadr, the day of its partition
might even yet be postponed indefinitely. But next year, or the next--who
shall say?
My journey was well nigh over. I had leisure now to recall all seen and
heard in the past few weeks and contrast it with the mental notes I had
made on the occasion of previous visits. And the truth was forced upon me
that Morocco was nearer the brink of dissolution than it had ever
been--that instability was the dominant note of social and political life.
I recalled my glimpses of the Arabs who live in Algeria and Tunisia, and
even Egypt under European rule, and thought of the servility and
dependence of the lower classes and the gross, unintelligent lives of the
rest. Morocco alone had held out against Europe, aided, to be sure, by the
accident of her position at the corner of the Mediterranean where no one
European Power could permit another to secure permanent foothold. And with
the change, all the picturesque quality of life would go from the Moghreb,
and the kingdom founded by Mulai Idrees a thousand years ago would become
as vulgar as Algeria itself.
There is something very solemn about the passing of a great kingdom--and
Morocco has been renowned throughout Europe. It has preserved for us the
essence of the life recorded in the Pentateuch; it has lived in the light
of its own faith and enforced respect for its prejudices upon one and all.
In days when men overrun every square mile of territory in the sacred name
of progress, and the company promoter in London, Paris, or Berlin
acquires wealth he cannot estimate by juggling with mineralised land he
has never seen, Morocco has remained intact, and though her soil teems
with evidences of mineral wealth, no man dares disturb it. There is
something very fascinating about this defiance of all that the great
Powers of the world hold most dear.
One could not help remembering, too, the charm and courtesy, the simple
faith and chivalrous life, of the many who would be swallowed up in the
relentless maw of European progress, deliberately degraded, turned
literally or morally into hewers of wood and drawers of
water--misunderstood, made miserable and discontented. And to serve what
end? Only that the political and financial ambitions of a restless
generation might be gratified--that none might be able to say, "A weak
race has been allowed to follow its path in peace."
Salam disturbed my meditations.
"Everything shut up, sir," he said. "I think you have forgot: to-morrow we
go early to hunt the wild boar, sir."
So I left Morocco to look after its own business and turned in.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] Sidi is a Moorish title, and means "my Lord."
[52] It is related of one Sultan that when a "Bashador" remonstrated with
him for not fulfilling a contract, he replied, "Am I then a Nazarene, that
I should be bound by my word?"
TO THE GATE OF THE PICTURE CITY
[Illustration: A MOORISH GIRL]