us. Laura and I had a little business with the American consul, who is
an example of what an American consul ought to be: a gentleman who is a
consul by profession and not by party favor, being the third Sprague in
line who has held the post. Through him we met a most interesting
person, one who brought us in direct contact, as it were, with that old
first party of Pilgrims to make the Oriental cruise. Michael Benunes was
his name, guide and courier to Mark Twain and his party, forty-two years
ago.
Benunes must have been a handsome creature in those days; he is a
handsome creature still--tall, finely featured, with flowing black
hair--carrying his sixty-five years as lightly as wind-flowers--gay,
voluble, enthusiastic--ready for the future, glorying in the past. He
took us to a coffee-house and entertained us, and held us enthralled for
an hour or more with his tide of eloquence and information. He told us
of the trip he had made through Spain with the "Innocents"; of many
other trips in lands near and far. He told us of the things in Gibraltar
we had not seen--of the galleries and the monkey-pit; also, of the
wonderful monkeys themselves who inhabit the Rock and are intelligent
almost beyond belief--who refrain from speaking English only because
they are afraid of having red coats and caps put on them and being made
into soldiers.
Gibraltar was once a part of Africa, according to tradition, and the
monkeys remained on the Rock when the separation took place. But guides
know that a subterranean passage from the bottomless monkey-pit connects
the Rock with Africa to this day; also that the monkeys travel back and
forth through it and keep posted on warfare and new inventions, in
preparation for a time when they shall be ready to regain their lost
empire, and that sometimes at dusk, if one lies hidden and remains very
quiet, he may overhear them discuss these things, as in the failing
twilight they "walk together, holding each other's tails."
[Illustration: WE COULD HAVE LISTENED ALL NIGHT TO BENUNES]
We could have listened all night to Benunes, for he made the old time
and still older traditions real to us. And perhaps Benunes would have
talked all night, for he declared--and we believed him--that he could
talk for five hours without a break. Naturally I expected to pay the
score in the coffee-house and to make some special acknowledgment to
Benunes for his time. Not at all; he called the waiter with a flourish,
threw down more than enough money and told him to keep the change,
regretting volubly that we could not partake further of his hospitality.
We should have the freedom of the city--of everything--he said, when we
came again. Ah me! I suspect there is only one Benunes, and that he
belongs to a time which will soon vanish away.
We went through the town--almost a closed town, because it was Sunday,
and not an inviting town, I think, at best. Here and there were narrow
streets that wound up or down, yet were only mildly seductive. But it is
a cosmopolitan town--the most cosmopolitan town on earth, perhaps. Every
kind of money is in use there--every language is spoken.
"Picture postals twelve for a quarter!" was the American cry that
greeted us at every turn. If we had been English it would have been
"twelve for a shilling," or if German "_zwoelf fuer ein Mark_," no doubt.
They do not mistake nationalities in Gibraltar--they have all kinds to
study from. Moors we saw--black, barelegged, and gayly attired--a taste
of the Orient we were about to enter--and if there were any
nationalities we did not see in this motley-thronged Mediterranean
gateway I do not recall them now. We bought a few postal cards, and two
fans with bull-fights on them, but unlike the _Quaker City_ "Pilgrims"
we bought no gloves.
I did look at certain stylish young creatures who passed now and then,
and wondered if one of them might not be the bewitching saleslady who
had sold those gloves. And then I remembered: she would not be young and
bewitching any more; she would be carrying the burden and the record of
many years. Unlike the first "Pilgrims," too, we did not hear the story
of the "Queen's Chair." That was worn out, at last, and exists to-day
only in the guide-books. We drove over to Spanish Town by and by, but it
was still less inviting over there, so we drove back, passed out through
the great gates which close every evening at sunset, and waited at the
pier for the little tender, for it was near evening and we were through
with Gibraltar--ready for the comfort of the ship.
It is a curious place--a place of a day's interest for the traveller--of
enormous interest to the military world. For two hundred years it has
been maintained with English blood and treasure, until it has become the
most costly jewel of that lavish kingdom. There are those
to-day--Englishmen--who say it is not worth the price--that it is no
longer worth any price--and they advocate returning it to Spain. No army
could take it, and no army wants to take it--nothing could be gained by
taking it any more. But it is one of England's precious traditions, and
it will take another two hundred years of vast maintenance before
England will let that tradition go.
There were papers on the tender, London and Paris journals, but the only
American news was that Congress had been advised against tinkering with
the tariff. That did not interest us. Had we not been face to face with
the headquarters of tariff that very morning, and heard the story of how
that noble industry was born? This later item was mere detail.
Back on the ship, looking at the lion couchant while the twilight falls
and the lights come out along its base. There is no harshness now. The
lion's skin has become velvet--it is a veritable lion asleep among
fireflies. We lift anchor and steam slowly into the Mediterranean. The
lion loses its form, becomes a dark wedge, the thin edge toward Spain.
Night deepens as we creep farther around; the wedge shortens, contracts
to a cone, a pyramid--the level sea changes to a desert. The feeling
somehow grows that Africa has reclaimed its own--the Lion of England has
become a pyramid of the sands.
IX
EARLY MEDITERRANEAN EXPERIENCES
Our first day in the Mediterranean was without a flaw. It was a quiet,
sunlit day--just pleasantly warm--the ship steady as a rock on that
luminous, level sea. No wonder the ancients did not want to leave these
placid tides and venture out upon the dark tossing Atlantic which they
could see foaming just beyond the Pillars of Hercules. No wonder they
peopled those hungry wastes with monsters and evil spirits. Here, on
this tranquil sea, there were no unfamiliar dangers. The summer shores
that shut them in held all their world--a golden world of romance
wherein gods mingled with the affairs of men; where fauns and hamadryads
flitted through the groves; where nereids and tritons sported along the
waves.
We have all day and night to get to Algiers--now less than three hundred
miles away--so we are just loafing along making wide circles--"to test
the compass," one of the officers said a while ago. I did not know they
had to test compasses, and I'm rather doubtful about the matter, still.
I suspect that officer is enjoying himself quietly at our expense. I
suspect it, because he is the same officer who told the Credulous One
the other day when the ship was rolling heavily, that the jarring,
beating sound we heard every now and then was made by the ship running
over whales. The noise was really made by the screw lifting out of the
water, and pounding the surface with its blades, but the Credulous One,
who is a trusting soul--a stout lady of middle age and gentle
spirit--believed the whale story and repeated it around the ship. She
said how many whales there must be down here, and pitied them whenever
she heard that cruel sound.
That officer came along again, a moment ago, and told us that the
mountains nearest are called the Sierra de Gata, which sounds true.
Somewhere beyond them lies Grenada and the Alhambra, and there, too, is
the old, old city of Cordova, capital of the Moorish kings, and for
three hundred years one of the greatest centres of commerce in the
world. But these things are only history. What we care for on a day like
this is invention--romance--and remembering that somewhere beyond that
snowy rim Don Quixote and Sancho wandered through the fields of fancy
and the woods of dream makes us wish that we might anchor along those
shores and follow that vagrant quest.
I drifted into the smoking-room and mentioned these things to the
Reprobates, but they did not seem interested. They had the place all to
themselves and the Doctor was dozing in one corner--between naps
administering philosophy to the Colonel and the Apostle, who were
engaged in their everlasting game of piquet. He roused up when I came in
to deal out a few comforting remarks.
"What do they care for scenery, or romance," he said, "or anything else
except to gamble all day? All you've got to do is to look at them to get
an inventory of their characters. Just look at the Colonel for
instance; did you ever see a better picture of Captain Kidd? Made his
money out of publishing the Bible without reading it and thinks he must
go to the Holy Land now to square himself. And the Apostle, there--look
at him! Look at his shape--why, he's likely to blow up, any time. Some
people think these are patients of mine. Nice advertisement, a pair like
that!"
I thought the Doctor a trifle hard on his fellow-Reprobates. I thought
the Colonel rather handsome, and I had seen him studying his guide-book
more than once. As for the Apostle, I said that I never really felt that
he was about to blow up; that appearances were often deceitful and very
likely there was no immediate danger.
They were not inclined to be sociable--the Colonel and the Apostle. They
merely intimated that we might go away, preferably to a place not down
on the ship's itinerary, and kept on with their eternal game.
It is curious, the fascination of that game, piquet--still more curious
how anybody can ever learn to play it. In fact nobody ever does learn
it. There are no rules--no discoverable rules. It is purely an
inspirational game, if one may judge from this exhibition of it. After
the cards are dealt out, the Colonel picks up his hand, jerks his hat a
little lower over his eyes, skins through his assortment, and says
"Huh!" At the same time the Apostle puts on his holiest look--chin up,
eye drooped, bland and child-like--examines his collection, and says,
"Goddlemighty!"
Then they play--that is, they go through the motions. The Colonel puts
down a handful of cards and says "Eight." The Apostle never looks at
them, but puts down a bigger handful of his own and says "Eleven." Then
the Colonel puts down another lot and says "Fourteen." Then the Apostle
lays down the balance of his stock and the Colonel says, "Hell, Joe,"
and they set down some figures. When they are through, the Colonel owes
the Apostle seven dollars.
Yes, it is a curious game, and would make the Colonel a pauper in time,
if nature did not provide other means of adjustment. After the Apostle
has his winnings comfortably put away and settled into place, the
Colonel takes out a new five-dollar gold piece, regards it thoughtfully,
turns it over, reads the date, and comments on its beauty. Then suddenly
he slaps it down on the table under his hand.
"Match you, Joe," he says, "match you for five!"
But the Apostle is wary. He smiles benignly while he turns his face from
temptation.
"No you don't," he says, "never again."
The Colonel slaps the coin down again, quite smartly.
"Just once, Joe," he wheedles; "just once, for luck!"
The Apostle strokes his chubby, child-like countenance with the tips of
his fingers, still looking away--his eyes turned heavenward.
"I won't do it, I tell you. No, now go on away. I told you yesterday I
wouldn't match you again--ever."
"Just once, Joe--just this one time."
"I won't do it."
The Apostle's attitude is still resolute, but there is a note of
weakening in his voice and his hand is working almost imperceptibly
toward his pocket.
"Just once more, Joe, just for five dollars--one turn."
The Apostle's hand is in his pocket.
"Now, I tell you," he says, "I'll match you this one time, and never
again."
"All right, Joe, just this one time, for luck; come on, now."
The coins go down together, and when they are uncovered the Colonel
takes both, always. Then the Apostle jerks up his cap, jams it on, and
starts for the deck.
"Hold on, Joe; just once more--just for luck."
"You go to hell, will you?"
This is the programme daily with but slight variation. Sometimes the
Apostle wins less than seven dollars--sometimes he loses more than five;
but he always does win at piquet and he always does lose at matching.
Thus do the unseen forces preserve the balance of exchange.
We crossed over and came in sight of the mountains of Algeria during the
afternoon, and all the rest of this halcyon day we skirted the African
shore, while Laura and I and two other juveniles kept a game of
shuffleboard going on the after deck. To-night there is to be another
grand dinner and dance, in honor of Washington's Birthday. We shall
awake to-morrow in the harbor of Algiers.
X
THE DIVERTING STORY OF ALGIERS
This is a voyage of happy mornings. It was morning--just sunrise--when
we met the American fleet homeward bound; it was morning when we caught
the first glimpse of Madeira and steamed into the harbor of Funchal; the
shores of Morocco--our first glimpse of the Orient--came out of the
sunrise, and it was just sunrise this morning when I looked out of my
port-hole on the blue harbor and terraced architecture of Algiers. And
the harbor of Algiers _is_ blue, and the terraced architecture is white,
or creamy, and behind it are the hills of vivid green. And there are
palms and cypress-trees, and bougainvillea and other climbing vines.
Viewed from the ship it is a picture city, and framed in the port-hole
it became a landscape miniature of wondrous radiance and vivid hues.
One of our passengers, a happy-hearted, elderly Hebrew soul, came along
the promenade just outside my state-room and surveyed the vision through
his glass. Presently he was joined by his comfortable, good-natured
wife.
"Vat you get me up so early for, Sol?" she said.
He handed her his glass, his whole face alive with joy of the
moment--fairly radiant it was.
"I yust couldn't help it!" he said. "Dot sunrising and dot harbor and
dot city all make such a beautiful sight."
A beautiful sight it was, and it had the added charm of being our first
near approach to the Orient. For Algiers is still the Orient, though it
has been a French colony for nearly a hundred years. The Orient and the
Occident have met here, and the Occident has conquered, but the Orient
is the Orient still, and will be so long as a vestige of it remains.
The story of Algiers, like that of every Mediterranean country, has been
a motley one, and bloody enough, of course. The Romans held it for
nearly five hundred years; the Vandals followed them, and these in turn
were ousted by the Arabs, about the year 700 A.D. Blood flowed during
each of these changes, and betweentimes. There was always blood--rivers
of it--lakes of it--this harbor has been red with it time and again.
It did not stop flowing with the Arabian conquest--not by any means.
Those Arabs were barbarians and robbers--Bedouins on land and pirates on
the sea. They were the friends of no nation or people, and when business
was dull outside, they would break out among themselves and indulge in
pillage and slaughter at home for mere pastime. About the time Columbus
was discovering America they were joined by the Moors and Jews who were
being driven out of Spain and who decided to take up piracy as a regular
business.
Piratic industry, combined with slavery, flourished for a matter of four
centuries after that; then Commodore Decatur with a handful of little
vessels met the Algerian fleet off Carthagena on the 20th of June,
1815. Decatur was a good hand with pirates. He went to work on that
fleet and when he got through there wasn't enough of it left to capture
a banana-boat. Then he appeared before Algiers and sent a note to the
Dey demanding the immediate release of all Americans in slavery. The Dey
replied that as a mere matter of form he hoped the American commander
would agree to sending a small annual tribute of powder.
"If you take the powder you must take the balls with it," was Decatur's
reply, and thus the young American republic, then only about thirty
years old, was first to break down the monstrous institutions of piracy
and enslavement which for more than a thousand years had furnished
Algerian revenues.
One Hussein (history does not mention his other name, but it was
probably Ali Ben) was the last Dey of Algiers, and his memory is not a
credit to his country's story. He was cruel and insolent; also, careless
in his statements.
Piracy under A. B. Hussein flourished with a good deal of its old vigor,
though I believe he was rather careful about plundering American
vessels. Hussein was also a usurer and the principal creditor of some
Jewish merchants who had a claim against France. The claim was in
litigation, and Hussein, becoming impatient, demanded payment from the
French king. As France had been the principal sufferer from Hussein's
pirates, it was not likely that the king would notice this demand. Soon
after, in the Dey's palace, the Kasba, at a court function the Dey asked
of the French consul why his master had remained silent.
"The King of France does not correspond with the Dey of Algiers," was
the haughty reply, whereupon Hussein struck the consul on the cheek with
his fan, and said a lot of unpleasant things of both king and consul.
That was the downfall of Algiers. A blockade was established by the
French, and three years later the French army of invasion marched in.
Fifteen hundred guns, seventeen ships of war, and fifty million francs
fell into the hands of France, as spoil of war. Algiers was no longer
the terror of the seas. Over six hundred thousand Christian people had
suffered the horrors of Algerian bondage, but with that July day, 1830,
came the end of this barbarism, since which time Algiers has acquired a
new habit--the habit of jumping at the crack of the French whip.
I may say here in passing that we were to hear a good deal of that
incident of the Dey, the French consul, and the fan. It was in the
guide-books in various forms, and as soon as I got dressed and on deck
one of our conductors--himself a former resident of Algiers--approached
me with:
[Illustration: "THAT IS THE KASBA"]
"Do you see that tower up there on the hill-top? That is the Kasba. It
was in that tower that Hussein, the last Dey of Algiers, struck the
French consul three times on the cheek with his fan--an act which led to
the conquest of Algiers by France."
I looked at the tower with greatly renewed interest, and brought it up
close to me with my glass. Then he pointed out other features of the
city, fair and beautiful in the light of morning: the mosque; the
governor's palace; the Arab quarter; the villas of wealthy Algerines. He
drifted away, then, and the Diplomat approached. He also had been in
Algiers once before. He said:
"Do you see that tower there on the hill-top? That is the Kasba. It was
in that tower that Hussein, the last Dey of Algiers, struck the French
consul three times on the cheek with his fan--an act which led to the
conquest of Algiers by France."
He went away, and I looked over the ship's side at the piratical-looking
boatmen who were gathering to the attack. They were a picturesque
lot--their costumes purely Oriental--their bare feet encased in shoes
right out of the _Arabian Nights_ pictures. I was just turning to remark
these things to one of the Reprobates, the Colonel, when he said:
"Do you see that tower up there on the hill-top?"
"Colonel," I said, "you've been reading your guide-book, and I saw you
the other day with a book called _Innocents Abroad_."
He looked a little dazed.
"Well," he said, "what of it?"
"Nothing; only that tower seems to be another 'Queen's Chair.' I've been
to it several times in the guide-book myself, and I've already had it
twice served up by hand. Let's don't talk about it any more, until we've
been ashore and had a look at it."
[Illustration: ONE DOES NOT HURRY THE ORIENT--ONE WAITS ON IT]
XI
WE ENTER THE ORIENT
We went ashore, in boats to the dock, then we stepped over some things,
and under some things and walked through the custom-house (they don't
seem to bother us at these places) and there were our carriages (very
grand carriages--quite different from the little cramped jiggle-wagons
of Gibraltar) all drawn up and waiting. And forthwith we found ourselves
in the midst of the Orient and the Occident--a busy, multitudinous life,
pressing about us, crowding up to our carriages to sell us postal cards
and gaudy trinkets, babbling away in mongrel French and other motley and
confused tongues.
What a grand exhibition it was to us who had come up out of the Western
Ocean, only half believing that such scenes as this--throngs of
sun-baked people in fantastic dress--could still exist anywhere in the
world! We were willing to sit there and look at them, and I kept my
camera going feverishly, being filled with a sort of fear, I suppose,
that there were no other such pictures on earth and I must catch them
now or never.
We were willing to linger, but not too long. We got our first lesson in
Oriental deliberation right there. Guides had been arranged for and we
must wait for them before we could start the procession. They did not
come promptly. Nothing comes promptly in the Orient. _One does not hurry
the Orient--one waits on it._ That is a maxim I struck out on the anvil,
white-hot, that first hour in Algiers, and I am satisfied it is not
subject to change. The sun poured down on us; the turbaned, burnoused,
barefooted selling-men rallied more vociferously; the Reprobates
invented new forms of profanity to fit Eastern conditions, and still the
guides did not come.
We watched some workmen storing grain in warehouses built under the fine
esplanade that flanks the water-front, and the picture they made
consoled us for a time. They were Arabs of one tribe or another and they
wore a motley dress. All had some kind of what seemed cumbersome
head-gear--a turban or a folded shawl, or perhaps an old gunny-sack made
into a sort of hood with a long cape that draped down behind. A few of
them had on thick European coats over their other paraphernalia.
We wondered why they should dress in this voluminous fashion in such a
climate, and then we decided that the wisdom of the East had prompted
the protection of that head-gear and general assortment of wardrobe
against the blazing sun. Our guides came drifting in by and by, wholly
unexcited and only dreamily interested in our presence, and the
procession moved. Then we ascended to the streets above--beautiful
streets, and if it were not for the Oriental costumes and faces
everywhere we might have been in France.
French soldiers were discoverable all about; French groups were chatting
and drinking coffee and other beverages at open-air cafes; fine French
equipages rolled by with ladies and gentlemen in fashionable French
dress. Being carnival-time, the streets were decorated with banners and
festoons in the French colors. But for the intermixture of fezzes and
turbans and the long-flowing garments of the East we would have said,
"After all, this is not the Orient, it is France."
But French Algiers, "gay, beautiful, and modern as Paris itself" (the
guide-book expression), is, after all, only the outer bulwark, or rather
the ornate frame of the picture it encloses. That picture when you are
fairly in the heart of it is as purely Oriental I believe as anything in
the world to-day, and cannot have changed much since Mohammedanism came
into power there a thousand years ago. But I am getting ahead too fast.
We did not penetrate the heart of Algiers at once--only the outer edges.