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WORKS BY
R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM
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LONDON: DUCKWORTH AND CO.
3, HENRIETTA ST., COVENT GARDEN
* * * * *
MOGREB-EL-ACKSA
A JOURNEY IN MOROCCO
BY R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM
* * * * *
"Show me Sohail and I will show you the moon"
* * * * *
LONDON: DUCKWORTH & CO.
3, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
* * * * *
_Published by William Heinemann in_ 1898.
_Revised Edition issued by Duckworth and Co. in_ 1921.
_All rights reserved_
* * * * *
_TO_
_HAJ MOHAMMED ES SWANI EL BAHRI_
_I DEDICATE THIS BOOK_
_Not that he will ever read_, _or even_, _being informed of it_, _ever
comprehend its nature_, _except in so far as to think it some_
"_Shaitanieh_" _or another not to be understood_.
_But I do so because we have travelled much together_, _and far_, _and it
must have been at times a sore temptation to him_, _in lonely places_,
_to assure himself of Paradise by_ "_nobbling_"_ an unbeliever_.
_Still_, _I would trust myself with him even to go the pilgrimage to
Mecca_; _therefore_, _he must trust me when I swear not to have cast a
spell on him_ (_as Christians will upon occasion_) _by writing his name
here for unbelieving men to wonder at_.
PREFACE
_TO WAYFARING MEN_.
SIRS, the Holy Scriptures, which, as we know, were written for our
learning, seem to imply that some of us are fools.
This may be so, and when I moralise, wrapped in the frequent
contemplation of my travels, upon lost opportunities, lack of
discernment, and on the general folly incident to all mankind, but which
each man deems centred in himself, I think so too. But still a traveller
in this travelling world, going perhaps to nowhere, or to some place that
he would rather never visit, cannot but find his most congenial public
amongst wayfaring men. Therefore to you who, like myself, have crossed,
or even now are crossing, desert or pampa in the night; riding towards
Capella, if in the southern hemisphere (Sohail in Africa), keeping the
wind a little blowing on your right cheek, dismounting now and then to
smoke and slack the girths; then camping on some river, sleeping fitfully
and rising oft to view your horses feeding so quietly under the southern
stars; or you who in the liner, ocean tramp, or even "windjammer" are
going somewhere for no special reason, I now address myself.
Writers, I take it, firstly write to please themselves, if not, 'tis ten
to one their writing pleases nobody. Following my postulate I have set
down that which pleased me upon my pilgrimage, hoping that it may please
at least some two or three who, like myself, have wandered. Therefore in
this, my modest book of travels, I have tried to write after the fashion
that men speak over the fire at night, their pipes alight, hands on their
rifles, boots turned towards the blaze, ears strained to catch the rustle
of a leaf, and with the tin tea mug stopped on its journey to the mouth
when horses snort; I mean I strove to write down that which I saw without
periphrasis, sans flag-wagging, and with no megrim in my head of having
been possessed by some great moral purpose, without which few travellers
nowadays presume to leave their homes.
I fear I have no theory of empires, destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race,
spread of the Christian faith, of trade extension, or of hinterlands; no
nostrum, by means of which I hope to turn Arabs to Christians, reconcile
Allah and Jahve, remove the ancient lack of comprehension between East
and West, mix oil and vinegar, or fix the rainbow always in the sky so
that the colour-blind may scan it at their leisure through the medium of
a piece of neutral-tinted glass; and generally I fear I write of things
without a scrap of interest to right-thinking men: of humours, sayings,
proverbs, traits of character; little of eating, drinking, or night
alarms of vermin, as travellers will; but, on the contrary, of lonely
rides, desolate camping places, of ruined buildings seen in peculiar
lights, of simple folk who pray to Allah seven times a day, and act as if
they never prayed at all; in fact of things which to a traveller, his
travels o'er, still conjure up the best part of all travel--its
melancholy. So I apologise for lack of analysis, neglect to dive into
the supposititious motives which influence but ill-attested acts, and
mostly for myself for having come before the public with the history of a
failure to accomplish what I tried; and having brought together a sack of
cobwebs, a pack of gossamers, a bale of thistle-down, dragon-flies'
wings, of Oriental gossip as to bygone facts, of old-world recollections,
of new-world practices half understood; lore about horses' colours, of
tales of men who never bother much to think, but chiefly act, carving
their lives out, where still space is left in which to carve, and acting
thus so inconsiderately whilst there still remain so many stones
unbroken, social problems to be solved, and the unpuncturable pneumatic
tyre not yet found out.
Touching my traveller's privilege I propose to use it sparingly, but at
the same time not to blurt out the brutal truth too trippingly, for
truth, I take it, suffers by too much comprehension, in the same manner
as the Mass has suffered even by its transmutation into Elizabethan
English. Religion, once made understandable of all, loses its
authenticity, and soon degenerates into the arid dialectics of the
self-righteous Nonconformist. What so consoling to a religious man, as
in a building (with the entry free) to join in singing praises to an
unknown God, in an uncomprehended tongue? And so perhaps the truth, {x}
declare it quite unblushingly, and it may become as little interesting as
is an ill-concocted lie.
It may be that my poor unphilosophic recollections of a failure may
interest some who, like myself, have failed, but still may like to hear
that even in a failure you can see strange things, meet as strange types,
and be impressed as much with wild and simple folk, as any traveller who
thundered through the land, Bible and gun in hand, making himself no
spiced conscience, but putting into practice the best traditions of our
race, confident that the one way to win a "nigger's" heart "is to speak
English to him," and doing so even at the rifle's mouth.
But if they do not interest, then I fall back again upon my wanderers,
and hope that in my slight impressions they may find something they
recognise, something that they have felt before upon the journey that
they make across the Pampa of their lives, making it as they do in
general on horses hipshot, lean and saddle-galled, asking their way from
those they meet, who answer them as wise as they, "Ride on to the lone
tree on the horizon, then bear a little to the right, and if you keep the
line, you cannot miss the houses, for the barking of the dogs will guide
you, if it falls dark."
And then comes evening, and the travellers, still kicking at their
horses' sides, straining their eyes, keep pushing forward, stumbling and
objurgating on the trail.
R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.
GARTMORE, 1898.
CHAPTER I
SOUTH-SOUTH-WEST, a little westerly with a cloudy sky, and with long
rollers setting into the harbour of Tangier, and the date October 1st in
the last year of supposititious grace. The old white town, built round
the bay with the Kasbah upon its hill, and the mosque tower just shining
darkly against the electric light, for Tangier passed from darkness to
electric light, no gas or oil lamps intervening, gave the effect as of a
gleaming horse-shoe in the dark. Outside the harbour, moored twice as
far away as the French ironclad, swung the _Rabat_ at anchor, for the
captain, a Catalan of the true Reus breed, was bound to supplement his
lack of seamanship with extra caution. Towards her we made our way late
in the evening in a boat manned by four strong-backed Jews, and seated
silently, for it was the first stage of a journey concerning which each
of our friends had added his wisest word of disencouragement. Nothing so
spurs a man upon a journey as the cautions of his friends, "dangerous,"
"impossible," "when you get there nothing worth seeing," and the like,
all show you plainly that the thing is worth the venture, for you know
the world is ever proud to greet the conqueror with praise and flowers,
but he has to conquer first. And if he fails, the cautious kindly friend
wags his wise head and shakes his moralising finger, thinks you a fool,
says so behind your back, but cannot moralise away experience, that
chiefest recompense of every traveller. So in the boat besides myself
sat Hassan Suleiman Lutaif, a Syrian gentleman, who acted as interpreter,
and Haj Mohammed es Swani, a Moor of the Riff pirate breed, short,
strong, black-bearded, with a turned-up moustache, and speaking Spanish
after the Arab fashion, that is without the particles, and substitution
of the gerund for every portion of the verb. El Haj and I were old
acquaintances, having made several journeys in Morocco, and being well
accustomed to each other's ways and idiosyncrasies upon the road.
Our bourne was Tarudant, a city in the province of the Sus, but rarely
visited by Europeans, and of which no definite account exists by any
traveller of repute. Only some hundred and fifty miles from Mogador, it
yet continues almost untouched, the only Moorish city to which an air of
mystery clings, and it remains the only place beyond the Atlas to the
south in which the Sultan has a vestige of authority. {2}
Outside its walls the tribesmen live the old Arab life, all going armed,
constantly fighting, each man's hand against his neighbour, and,
therefore, in a measure, raised against himself. And yet a land of
vines, of orange gardens, olive yards, plantations of pomegranates, Roman
remains, rich mines; but cursed "with too much powder," as the Arabs say,
and therefore doomed, up to the present day, to languish without
pauperism, prostitution, and the modern vices which, in more favoured
lands, have long replaced the old-world vices which man brought with him
into the old world. Even my friends were all agreed that to reach
Tarudant in European clothes was quite impossible. Thus a disguise
became imperative. After a long discussion I determined to impersonate a
Turkish doctor travelling with his "taleb" {3a}--that is, scribe--to see
the world and write his travels in a book. {3b} God, the great doctor,
but under Him His earthly vicegerents, practicants, practitioners, with
or without diploma, throughout the east, enjoy considerable respect; they
kill, they cure, and still God has the praise. No one asks where they
studied, and if faith in his powers helps a doctor in his trade, the east
of all lands should be most congenial to all those who live by lancet,
purge, and human faith. My stock of medicines was of the most homeric
type, quinine and mercury, some Seidlitz powders, eye wash for
ophthalmia, almost, in fact, as simple as that of the old Scotch doctor
who doctored with what he styled the two simples, that is, laudanum and
calomel.
The multitudinous dialects of Arabic, the constant travelling, either
upon the pilgrimage or for the love of travel, which seems inherent in
the Arab, render it possible for a European occasionally to pass
unrecognised, even although his stock of Arabic is as exiguous as was my
own. Behold us, then, approaching the _Rabat_, a steamer of the Linea
Tras-Atlantica Espanola, bound for Mogador, some five days' journey below
Tangier, the point at which I intended to put on Moorish clothes, buy
mules and horses, engage a guide, and set out for Tarudant, the city
where La Caba, Count Julian's daughter (she whose beauty tempted Don
Rodrigo, and to avenge whose honour her father sold Spain to the Moors),
lies buried, though how she came to die there is to historians unknown.
On board the ship there was no light, no look-out, and the accommodation
ladder was triced up for the night, stewards were asleep, and the long
narrow vessel dipped her nose into the rollers, rolling and heaving in
the dark, whilst we in Spanish, English, Arabic, and Portuguese rang all
the changes upon ship ahoy. At last a sulky, sleepy quartermaster
deigned to let down the ladder, and we scrambled upon deck.
Next morning found us off Arzila, the Julia Constantia Zilis of the
Romans, a small, walled town lost among orange gardens, and girt by walls
built by the Portuguese. Over the gateway the half-obliterated arms of
Portugal can still be seen, but mouldering to decay, as is the country
that they represent. Close to the walls rises the tomb of the Saint of
Arzila; the white dome springs from a dense thicket of palmetto, dwarf
rhododendron, berberis, and aromatic shrubs, a tiny stream bordered by
oleanders (bitter as is an oleander is a proverb in the land) runs past
it; above the dome and red-tiled roof two palms keep watch, and whisper
in the wind the secrets palm trees know, and tell each other of the East,
and of the various changes, Arab and Berber, Moor and Portuguese, they
have seen during the course of their slow growth and long extended days.
Columbus visited the place; the battle of Trafalgar was fought a few
leagues off, and an old shepherd, still living where he was born, above
the lighthouse on Cape Spartel, remembers to have seen it as a boy when
he lay out upon the hills tending his goats.
Inside the town decay and ruin, heaps of garbage, a palace falling here,
a hovel there. A town almost entirely given up to Jews, who carry on
their business fleecing the Moors, and still complaining when at last the
cent. per cented victim turns and rends. The best-known citizen is Mr.
Ben Chiton, an Israelite of the best type, old, and white bearded, and
with round, beady eyes, like an old rat, consul of seven nations, with
all the seven flag-staffs on his hospitable roof. Dressed in the Jewish
gown girt round the waist, wearing his slippers over white cotton
stocking's, and the black cup badge of the servitude of all his race
throughout Morocco. His house is neat and clean, almost beyond the power
of endurance, Rahel and Mordejai labouring incessantly with broom and
whitewash brush, and he himself talking incessantly in the Toledan {5}
dialect and thick Jewish accent, of politics, of kings, ambassadors, and
as to whether England and France will go to war over the question of the
Niger and the like, whilst all the time he presses brandy on you in a
lordly glass holding about a pint, which you must swallow no matter what
the hour, the while he calls upon the God of Isaac to bear him witness
that the house is yours, and shows you, with just pride, the chair on
which he says the Prince of Wales once sat, although historians do not
seem to chronicle his passage through the town. An Israelite of
Israelites, a worthy Jew, come of the tribe of Judah as he says, one to
whose house all travellers are welcome; loved by his family with
veneration, as the heads of Jewish houses are. Long may he prosper, and
may his roof grow broad as a phylactery, and become strong enough to bear
the flag-staffs of all the nations upon earth, and his house long remain
to show the curious what most probably a Jewish house in Spain was like
before the Catholic Kings, in their consuming thirst for unity, expelled
the Jews, sweeping at one fell blow commerce and usury out of their
sacred land, and setting up a faith so uniform that to be saved by it was
so easy that one wonders any one was lost. A few hours' steaming brings
us to Larache (El Areish), once a great stronghold of the Moorish pirates
who infested the narrow straits, and who at times ran as far north as
Plymouth, westward to Naples, and made the coasts of France, Spain,
Italy, and Portugal their especial hunting grounds.
Three of their galleys still lie rotting in the Luccos, and at low tide
their ribs can still be seen projecting from the sand. The city, painted
red, white, and blue, and the whole scale of tints from brown to Naples
yellow stands on a hill, and is to-day the haunt of consuls of all
nations, who have replaced the pirates of the times gone by. Consuls of
France and Spain, of Portugal, of Montenegro, Muscat, Costa Rica, Brazil,
United States, their flag-staffs rear aloft from almost every house-top,
and their great flags, large in proportion to the smallness of the state
they represent, flap in the breeze; the caps of liberty, the rising suns,
and other trade-marks of the various states seeming to wink and to
encourage one another in the attempt to be the first to show the glories
of the commercial system to the benighted Moors. All round the town the
walls and ramparts run, built by the Portuguese during the period when
they possessed the place. At the west side a ditch remains, now turned
into a garden, and in it artichokes, egg-plants, and pimentos grow, and
the green stuffs of various kinds for which the Moors are famous, so much
so that in the times they lived in Spain, it was a current saying of a
good farmer "that he grows as many egg-plants in his garden as a Morisco
gardener." {6} Just at the corner of the ditch the walls run into as
sharp an angle as the bows of a torpedo boat, and on the ramparts usually
is seen a colony of storks, who build their nests amongst the mouldering
gabions, ravelines, and counter-scarps, and sit and chatter on the brass
guns and carronades, with curling snakes around the touch-holes, and with
inscription setting forth their date, the place of casting, and the
legend "Viva Portugal!" Their gunners are long dead, their carriages
long mouldered into dust, and the storks left to sit and mock the pomps
and circumstance of foolish war.
From the town sallied out (in 1578) the army under Don Sebastian, who met
his fate fighting the infidel at Alcazar el Kebir, near a long bridge
over a marshy stream known as Wad-el-Mhassen. The battle still is called
amongst the Moors "The Three Kings' Fight," for besides Don Sebastian
fell two Moorish kings. With Don Sebastian there fell the flower of the
nobility of Portugal, and by his death the crown passed quickly to
Phillip II. (the Prudent) of Spain, who knew far better than to embark in
expeditions into Africa. The battle was memorable, for Abdel-Malik, King
of Fez, died of exhaustion on the field, and Don Sebastian, rather than
survive disgrace, plunged, as did Argentine at Bannockburn, into the
thickest of the fight, and fell or disappeared, for though his faithful
servant, Resende, claimed to have seen his body, so much doubt existed of
his death that the strange sect known as Sebastianists arose in Portugal.
Their tenet was that Don Sebastian was still alive, but kept in durance
by the Moors, and in remote and old-world villages believers linger even
to the present day. I myself saw a sort of pterodactyle, years ago in
Portugal, a strange old man dressed in black clothes, and wrapped, in
heat and cold alike, in a thick cloak. The people of the village called
him mad, but, looking at the thing impartially, madness and faith are the
same thing, the only difference being as to the mountain which the
believer wishes to remove.
Lala Mamouna, the female saint who guards Larache from pestilence and
famine, sudden death, and the few simple ailments which Arabs suffer
from, has her white crenelated sanctuary on a hill which overlooks the
sea, and to her tomb women who wish for children to carry on the misery
of life, repair, and pray or chatter with each other, and no doubt the
saint is just as tolerant of scandal as are the wise old men who sun
their stomachs at the windows of a club.
At this accursed port, Larache, of the Beni-Aros, after a signal had been
made by a man mounted on a mule, who held one end of a row of flags, the
other being made fast to a post, a great annoyance fell upon the
blameless captain of the good ship _Rabat_. The bar at El Areish is
three times out of four impassable when steamers call, as here the river
Luccos {8} meets the tide, and such a surf gets up that as the people
have no surf boats, communication from a vessel to the shore is always
dangerous, and not frequently impossible. This, to an ordinary steamer,
means either delay or loss of cargo, generally the latter, for when the
bar is bad it often takes three or four days to become passable, and as
the anchorage is most precarious a south-east gale causes great danger to
a vessel lying in the open roads. On this occasion, though, the sea was
like a sheet of ice, smooth, shining, and the bar just marked by a thin
line of foam. To the astonishment of the uninitiated passengers the fury
of the captain knew no bounds, the officers turned sulky, and the one man
on board who seemed unmoved was the unlucky priest, who shipped to please
the owners of the line, or to appease the folly of the nation, or for
"empeno," {9} or for some other reason at present not made known, passed
all his time in fishing when in port, or when at sea in studying
counterpoint, and playing on a piano which was tuned about the time Queen
Isabella was expelled from Spain.
A narrow, nine-knot crank and Clyde-built steamer was the _Rabat_, full
five-and-twenty years of age, boilers too small, but engines sound, and
the whole vessel kept as clean as holystone and paint could clean, brass
work all shining, and herself ever a-rolling like a swing-boat at a fair,
sailed out of Barcelona, owned by the Spanish Trans-Atlantic Company
(Chairman: the Marquis of Comillas), and subsidised by the Spanish
Government to carry mails down the Morocco coast in order that the
majesty of Spain might fill the eyes and strike the imagination of the
Moorish dogs, and show them that the Spaniards were on a level with the
other nations, such as the Inglis, Frances, el Bortokez (Portuguese), el
Brus (the Germans, that is, Prussians), and the Austrians, called by the
Moors el Nimperial.
Captain from Reus, taciturn, and shaved each Sunday when the priest said
mass, for it is decent for a man to stand before his God with a clean
chin, at other times a stubble on his face on which a man might strike a
match, so that the match had not been made in Spain. Four officers: an
Andalusian, two Catalans, and a Basque; two engineers, and the
aforementioned priest, together with a crew of eighteen men and half a
dozen stewards, served to get the craft, whose utmost measurement could
not be above twelve hundred tons, across the sea.
The Pope had granted plenary indulgence in the following terms: "for
looking to the circumstances, the weather, etc., I deign to grant full
dispensation according to the ecclesiastic law, from fasting and from
abstinence (from meat) to all those who by reason, either of their
profession or as passengers, find themselves on board the vessels of this
Company, and that for three years' time, excepting (if it can be done
without too great an inconvenience) on Good Friday and on the Vigils of
the Apostles, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, also on Christmas Day and any
other day which may be opportune . . . on which three days I also
dispense from sin the passengers and crew if any difficulty unforeseen by
me makes their compliance an impossibility." Given "en Vaticano" and
through the Bishop of Madrid and Alcala under whose aegis it appears that
Spanish ships all sail armed with this plenary indulgence; manned with
the priest and men and duly subsidised, it could not be expected that the
_Rabat_ cared much for passengers, still less for cargo; so when the
lumbering "barcazas" approached the ship, curses loud, guttural, and deep
were heard on every side. The unwilling sailors, mostly Valencians and
Catalans, stood by to work the donkey engine; but their fears were vain,
for it appeared that all the cargo was but four bales of Zatar (Marjoram)
for the Habana, and a few thousand melons for the Sultan's camp. The
bales of Zatar soon were dumped into the hold, but five long hours were
wasted passing the melons up from hand to hand; in counting them,
recounting them, in storming, and the whole time a noise like Babel going
on, shouting of Moors, cursing of Spaniards, and the confusion ten times
intensified because no man could speak a word the other understood. The
_Rabat_ having been only five years upon the coast, no one on board could
speak a word of Arabic. Why should they, did they not speak Christian,
and are Spaniards and sailors to be supposed to burrow in grammars as if
they were schoolboys or mere Englishmen. A miserable Jew, fearfully
sea-sick, balancing up in the gunwale of a boat, in a mixed jargon of
Arabic and Portuguese kept tale after a fashion, of the melons, and at
last the vessel put to sea amid the curses of the passengers, and having
earned the name amongst the Arabs of Abu Batigh, the Father of the
Melons. Amongst the Arabs almost every man is Father of something or
some quality, and lucky he who does not find himself styled, Father of
the "ginger beard," or of "bad breath," or any other personal or moral
failing, peculiarity, or notable defect.
Once more we urge our nine-knot course, and now find time to observe our
fellow-passengers. In the cabin a German lady and her daughters are
enduring agonies of sea-sickness, on the way to join her husband at
Rabat. {11} The husband, known as the "mojandis," that is, engineer to
the Sultan, proves, when we meet him, to be a cheery polyglot blasphemer,
charged with the erection of some forts at the entrance to the harbour of
Rabat. For a wonder the bar of the river Bu-Regeh proves passable, and
the German lady and her husband can land, which is, it seems, a piece of
luck, for the bar is known as the most dangerous of all the coast.
Rabat, perhaps the most picturesquely situated of any city in Morocco,
stands on a hill underneath which the river runs, and the spray from the
bar is drifted occasionally into the houses like a shower of snow. Here
is the richest colony of the Spanish Jews, and here the best Morisco
{12a} families took refuge after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain.
The town is estimated to contain some 20,000 inhabitants, and it is one
of the four official capitals; {12b} the Sultan has a palace with
enormous gardens on the outskirts of the town. Just opposite is built
Salee, called by the Moors "Sala," famous for having given its name to
the most enterprising of the pirates of the coast in days gone by.
To-day it is a little white, mouldering place, baked in the fierce sun,
or swept by south-west gales, according to the season and the time of
year. The inhabitants are still renowned for their fanaticism, and the
traveller who passes through the place is seldom able to dismount, but
traverses the place trying to look as dignified as possible amid a shower
of curses, a sporadic curse or two, and some saliva if he ventures within
range of mouth. Many a poor Christian has worked his life out in the
construction of the walls, and the superior whiteness of the inhabitants
would seem to show that some of the Christian dogs have left their blood
amongst the people of the place. Men still alive can tell of what a
scourge the pirates were, and I myself once knew a venerable lady who in
her youth had the distinction of having been taken by a Salee rover; an
honour in itself to be compared alone to that enjoyed by ladies who are
styled peeresses in their own right. Robinson Crusoe, I think, once
landed at the place, and the voyages of imaginary travellers make a place
more authentic than the visit of the unsubstantial personages of real
life. A little up the river is the deserted city of Schellah, and on the
way to it, upon a promontory jutting into the stream, is built the
half-finished tower of Hassan, an enormous structure much like the
Giralda at Seville, and by tradition said to be built by the same
architect who built that tower, and also built the tower of the Kutubich,
which, at Morocco city, serves as a landmark in the great plain around.
The Giralda and the Kutubich spring from the level of the street, but the
Hassan tower excels them both in site, standing as it does upon a cliff,
and "looming lofty" {13} as one passes in a boat beneath. Schellah
contains the tombs of the Sultans of the Beni Merini dynasty. El Mansur
(the victorious) sleeps underneath a carved stone tomb, over which date
palms rustle, and by which a little stream sings a perpetual dirge. The
tomb is held so sacred that till but lately neither Christians nor Jews
could visit it. Even to-day the incursions of the fierce Zimouri, a
Berber tribe, render a visit at times precarious. The walls of the town
enclose a space of about a mile circumference; sheep, goats, and camels
feed inside them, and a footpath leads from one deserted gate-house to
the other, a shepherd boy or two play on their reeds, and though the sun
beats fiercely on the open space, it looks forlorn and melancholy, and
even the green lizards peering from the walls look about timidly, as if
they feared to see a ghost. On gates and walls, on ruined tombs and
palaces, the lichens grow red after the fashion of hot countries, and the
fine stonework, resembling the stucco work of the Alhambra, remains as
keen in edge and execution as when the last stroke of the chisel turned
it out. Outside the town are olive yards and orange gardens, and one
comes upon the long-deserted place with the same feelings as a traveller
sees Palenque burst on him out of the forests of Yucatan, or as in
Paraguay after a weary following of dark forest trails, the spires of
some old Jesuit Mission suddenly appear in a green clearing, as at Jesus
or Trinidad, San Cosme Los Apostoles, or any other of the ruined
"capillas," where the bellbird calls amongst the trees, and the
inhabitants take off their hats at sunset and sink upon their knees,
bearing in their minds the teaching of the Jesuits, whom Charles III.
expelled from Spain and from the Indies, to show his liberalism.
Our most important passenger was Don Jose Miravent, the Spanish Consul at
Mogador, returning to his post after a holiday; a formal Spaniard of the
old school, pompous and kind, able to bombast out a platitude with the
air of a philosopher communicating what he supposes truth. At dinner he
would square his elbows, and, throwing back his head, inform the world
"the Kings of Portugal are now at Caldas"; or if asked about the war in
Cuba, say: "War, sir, there is none; true some negroes in the Manigua
{14} are giving trouble to our troops, but General Blanco is about to go,
and all will soon be over; it is really nothing (no es na), peace will,
please God, soon reign upon that lovely land." At night he would sit
talking to his cook, a Spanish woman (the widow of an English soldier),
whom he was taking back to Mogador; but though he talked, and she replied
for hours most volubly, not for a moment were good manners set aside, nor
did the cook presume in any way, and throughout the conversation talked
better than most ladies; but the "tertulia" over, straight became a cook
again, brought him his tea, calling him "Amo" (master), "Don Jose," and
he quite affably listened to her opinions and ideas of things, which
seemed at least as valuable as were his own. A Jewish merchant dressed
in the height of Cadiz fashion, and known as Tagir {15a} Isaac, occupied
much the same sort of social state on board as does a Eurasian in
Calcutta or Bombay. Tall, thin, and up-to-date, he had divested himself
almost entirely of the guttural Toledan accent, but the sign of his
"election" still remained about his hair, which tended to come off in
patches like an old hair trunk, and at the ends showed knotty, as if he
suffered from the disease to which so many of his compatriots in Morocco
are subject, and which makes each separate hair stand out as if it were
alive. {15b}
But, as is often seen even in more ambitious vessels than the _Rabat_,
the passengers of greatest interest were in the steerage. Not that there
was a regular steerage as in ocean-going ships, but still, some thirty
people went as deck passengers, and amongst them was to be seen a perfect
microcosm of the eastern world. Firstly a miserable, pale-faced
Frenchman, dressed in a dirty "duster" coat, bed-ticking "pants," black
velvet waistcoat, and blue velvet slippers, with foxes' heads embroidered
on them in yellow beads, his beard trimmed to a point, in what is termed
(I think) Elizabethan fashion, and thin white hands, more disagreeable in
appearance than if they had been soiled by all the meanest work on earth.
His "taifa" {15c} (that is band) consisted of one Spanish girl and two
half-French half-Spanish women, whom he referred to as his "company," and
whom he said were to enact "cuadros vivos," that is "living pictures," in
the various ports. They, less polite than he, called him "el Alcahuete,"
which word I leave in Spanish, merely premising (as North Britons say)
that it is taken from the Arabic "el Cahueit," and that the celebrated
"Celestina" {16} was perhaps in modern times the finest specimen of the
profession in any literature. So whilst our captain read "Jack el
Ripero" (it cost him two pesetas when new in Cadiz), I take a glance at
the inferior races, who were well represented in the steerage of the
ship.
Firstly, I came across a _confrere_ in the healing art who hailed from
Tunis, a fattish Arab dressed in Algerian trousers, short zouave jacket,
red fez, pink and white sash, and watch chain of two carat silver with an
imitation seal of glass, brown thread stockings and cheap sand shoes
after the pattern to be seen at Margate. "Tabib numero Wahed," that is
an A1 doctor, so he says, has studied in Stamboul, where he remained nine
years studying and diligently noting down all that he learnt. But,
curiously enough, all that he now remembers of the Turkish language is
the word "Mashallah," which he displayed to my bewilderment, until
Lutaif, who spoke good Turkish, turned on a flood of pertinent remarks,
to which the doctor answered in vile Tunisian Arabic, not having
understood a word. Though not a linguist, still a competent
practitioner, trepanning people's heads with ease, and putting in pieces
of gourd instead of silver as being lighter, and if the patient died, or
by the force of constitution lived through his treatment, the praise was
God's, Allah the great Tabib (doctor), although he sends his delegates to
practice on mankind, just in the same way that in the east each man
commits his work to some one else to do. At least he said so, and I
agree, but fail to see the use of substituting gourd for silver, seeing
the vast majority of heads are gourds from birth. Quinine he had, and
blistering fluid, with calomel and other simples, and when the Christian
quinine ran out, he made more for himself out of the ashes of an oleander
stick mixed with burnt scales of fish and dead men's bones, and found his
preparation, which he styled "El quina beladia" (native-made quinine),
even more efficacious than the drug from over sea. Also he used the
seven herbs, known as the "confirmed herbs," for tertian fevers, with
notable success. A cheerful, not too superstitious son of AEsculapius,
taking himself as seriously as if he had had a large brass plate upon his
door in Harley Street, and welcomed by his surviving patients in Rabat on
our arrival with great enthusiasm. {17a} His wife, a shrouded figure
lost in white veils and fleecy shawls, had the dejected air that doctors'
wives often appear to labour under, even in countries where they can rule
their husbands openly.
A group of high-class Arabs sat by themselves upon the decks, waited upon
by a tall tribesman faced like a camel, and with the handle of his pistol
and curved dagger outlined beneath his clothes. This group was composed
of sherifs {17b} from Algeria, all high-caste men, dignified, slow, and
soft of speech, deliberate in movement, their clothes as white as snow,
nails dyed with henna, each with a heavy rosary in his hand, their
business somewhat mysterious, but bound to see the Sultan in his camp.
Throughout Algeria the sherifs are not allowed to levy contributions from
the people openly, but it is said in private, they receive them all the
same. Of all the population they are the least contented with French
rule, as since the conquest naturally they have fallen somewhat from the
position they once occupied, and cannot go about receiving presents for
the pains they have taken to preserve their lineage, as they do in
Morocco, making themselves a travelling offertory.
All of them wished to know of the late war between the Sultan of Turkey
and the "Emperor of the Greeks." They seemed to think the latter was a
descendant of the _Paleologi_, and asked if it were true the Sultan had
killed all the Greeks except fifteen, and if these latter had not fled to
"Windres" (London) to seek protection from the Great Queen and to advise
her to make preparations against the "Jehad" {18} to come. With them
they carried sundry hide bags of gold with which they said they wished to
purchase permission from the Sultan of Morocco to export grain, as the
harvest in Algeria had not been good owing to locusts, and the lack of
rain. Of course this may have been the object of their visit, but since
the Greco-Turkish war all the Mohammedan world is on the stir, and men
are travelling about from place to place disseminating news, and all the
talk is on the victories of the Turks, and on the rising of the tribes in
India; in fact, a feeling seems to be abroad that the Christian power is
on the wane, and that their own religion once again may triumph and
prevail.
At Casa Blanca--called by the Arabs Dar el Baida, that is, the White
House--the sherifs go ashore, and I last saw them seated on their bags,
outside the waterport, their backs against the ramparts of the town,
their eyes apparently fixed upon nothing though seeing everything,
telling their beads and waiting patiently, enduring sun and flies until
their servant should return and tell them of a lodging fit for persons of
their quality. Of all the towns on the Morocco coast Dar el Baida has
the most business, the country at the back of it is fertile and grows
much wheat, the tribes are fairly prosperous, and the best horses of the
country come from the districts known as Abda and Dukala, a few leagues
from the place.
Consuls abound, of course, so do hyenas--that is, outside the town--but
both are harmless and furnish little sport, except the Consul of America,
my good friend Captain Cobb. He, if my memory fails me not, piled up his
brig some thirty years ago upon the beach in the vicinity, liked the
climate, became a Consul, naturally, and to this day has never returned
to his sorrowing family in Portland, Maine.
In thirty years tradition says he has not learned a word of Arabic with
the exception of the word "Balak" (look out), which he pronounces
"Balaaker," and yet holds conversations by the hour in Arabic, and both
the patients seem contented with their lot. All the attractions to be
met with in the town do not detain me; what takes my fancy most is to see
tribesmen from the country, armed to the teeth, and balancing a gun full
six feet long upon their saddles, sit on their horses bargaining at shops
in the same fashion I have seen the Gauchos at a camp-town in South
America, their horses nodding their heads and looking half asleep, their
owners seated with one leg passed round the pommel of the saddle, and
passing hours seated as comfortably as in a chair.
Back to the steamer in a boat, and at the waterport we pass a group of
Jews washing themselves, in preparation for a feast. Lutaif ranks as a
wit for saying that the Jews will defile the sea, for any wit is small
enough to bait a Jew with; and the Arabs, though they will say the same
things of a Christian behind his back, all laugh consumedly when a
Christian takes their side against a Jew.
On board the uneasy ship, tossing like a buck-jumper in the Atlantic
swell, we find more Oriental items ready to hand. The first a tall,
thin, cuckoldy-looking Arab knave, dressed in a suit of slop-made
European clothes, his trousers half-a-foot too short, his boots
unblacked, and himself closely watched by two Franciscan Friars. {20a}
It appeared he was a convert. Now, in Morocco a convert is a most rare
and curious animal, and he is usually not a great credit to his
capturers. On this occasion, it appears, the convert had been dallying
with the Protestants, had given them hopes, had led them on, and at the
last, perhaps because he found the North-British water {20b} of their
baptism too cold for him, or perchance because the Friars gave a dollar
more, had fallen away to Rome. However, there he was, a veritable
"brand," a sheep, who had come into one of the folds, leaving the other
seven million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and ninety-nine still
straying about Morocco, steeped in the errors of Mohammedanism. His
captors were a gentlemanlike, extremely handsome, quiet Castilian, who to
speak silver (hablar en plata) seemed a little diffident about his prize,
and went about after the fashion of a boy in Texas who has caught a
skunk. The other guardian had no doubts. He was a sturdy Catalonian
lay-brother, who pointed to the "brand" with pride, and told us, with a
phrase verging upon an oath, that he was glad the Protestants had had
their noses well put out of joint. The victim was a merry sort of knave,
who chewed tobacco, spoke almost every language in the world, had
travelled, and informed me, when I asked him where he was going, that the
"Frayliehs" (Friars) were taking him to Cadiz "to have the water put upon
his head." He seemed an old hand at the business, and recognised my
follower, Swani, as a friend, and they retired to talk things over, with
the result that, e'er night fell, the "convert" was in a most unseemly
state and singing Spanish songs in which Dolores, Mercedillas, and other
"Chicas" figured largely, and were addressed in terms sufficient to upset
a convent of Franciscan Friars. Peace to his baptism, and may the
Protestants, when their turn comes to mark a sheep, secure as fine a
specimen as the one I saw going to Cadiz to have "the water put upon his
head." This missionary question and the decoying of God-fearing men out
of the ranks of the religion they were born in, is most thorny in every
country like Morocco, where the religion of the land is one to which the
people are attached. An earnest missionary, a pious publican, a minister
of the crown who never told a lie, are men to praise God for,
continually. Honour to all of them, labouring in their vocations and
striving after truth as it appears to them. I, for my part, have found
honest and earnest men both in the Scottish missions in Morocco and in
the ranks of the Franciscan Friars from Spain. Amongst both classes, and
in the missions sent by other churches, good men abound; and in so far as
these good men confine themselves to giving medicines, healing the sick,
and showing by the example of their lives that even Christians (whom
Arabs all believe are influenced in all they do by money) can live pure,
self-denying lives for an idea, the good they do is great; but that by
living, as they do, amongst the Moors, they do more good than they could
do at home by living the same lives, that I deny. Amongst Mohammedans
plenty of people lead good lives, as good appears to them--that is, they
follow out the precepts of their faith, give to the poor, do not lend
money upon usury; and, to be brief, practice morality, {22} and believe
by doing so that they are sacrificing to some fetish, invented by
mankind, to make men miserable. When, though, it comes to marking
sheep--the object, after all, for which a missionary is sent--I never saw
a statement of accounts which brought the balance out upon the credit
side. The excuse is, generally, "Oh, give us time; these things work
slowly;"--as indeed they do; and if the missions think it worth their
while to send men out to doctor syphilis, cure gonorrhoea, and to attend
to every form of the venereal disease, their field is wide; but if they
wish to convert Mohammedans let them produce a balance-sheet, and show
how many of the infidel they have converted in the last twenty years.
Not that I blame them for endeavouring to perform what seems impossible,
or try to detract an atom from the praise due to them for their efforts,
but when so many savages still exist in Central Africa and in East
London--not to speak of Glasgow and the like--it seems a pity to expend
upon a people, civilised according to their needs, so much good faith,
which might be used with good effect upon less stony ground.
Prophets, reformers, missionaries, "illuminated" folk, and those who
leave their homes to preach a faith, no matter what it is, are people set
apart from the flat-footed ordinary race of human kind; of such are
missionaries and the dream world they live in. How many an honest,
hard-working young man, who gets his education how he can, by pinching,
screwing, reading at bookstalls, paying for instruction to those who live
perhaps almost as poorly as he himself, thinks when he reads of
Livingstone, Francisco Xavier, the Jesuits of Paraguay, and Father
Damien, that he, too, would like to take his cross upon his back and
follow them. It seems so fine (and is so splendid in reality) a
self-denying life, lived far away from comforts, without books; Bible and
gun in hand, to show the heathen all the glories of our faith.
Then comes reality, mocker of all best impulses, and the enthusiastic
spirit finds itself bound in a surgery (say in Morocco city), finds work
increasing, and his dreams of preaching to a crowd of dusky catechumens
dressed in white, with flowers in their hair, and innocence in every
heart, turned to Dead Sea Fruit, as with motives misunderstood, with
caustic, mercury, sulphate of copper and the rest, he burns the fetid
ulcer, or washes sores, and for reward can say after a term of years that
he has made the people of the place look upon European clothes with less
aversion than when first he came.
If the mere fact of getting accustomed to the sight of Europeans were a
thing worthy of self-congratulation, then indeed missionaries in Morocco
have achieved much. But as I see the matter Europeans are a curse
throughout the East. What do they bring worth bringing, as a general
rule?
Guns, gin, powder, and shoddy cloths, dishonest dealing only too
frequently, and flimsy manufactures which displace the fabrics woven by
the women; new wants, new ways, and discontent with what they know, and
no attempt to teach a proper comprehension of what they introduce; these
are the blessings Europeans take to Eastern lands. Example certainly
they do set, for ask a native what he thinks of us, and if he has the
chance to answer without fear, 'tis ten to one he says, Christian and
cheat are terms synonymous. Who that has lived in Arab countries, and
does not know that fear, and fear alone, makes the position of the
Christian tolerable. Christ and Mohammed never will be friends; their
teaching, lives, and the conditions of the different peoples amongst whom
they preached make it impossible; even the truce they keep is from the
teeth outwards, and their respective followers misunderstand each other
quite as thoroughly as when a thousand years ago they came across each
other's path for the first time. But if the Arabs constitute a stony
vineyard, the Jews are worse, and years ago when first the missionaries
appeared in the coast towns of southern Barbary, they fleshed their
maiden weapons on the Jews. It struck the chosen people that the best
weapon to employ against their new tormentors was that of irony, and so
they cast about to find a nickname calculated at the same time to
ridicule and wound, and found it, made it stick and rankle, so that
to-day every new missionary on landing has to accommodate his shoulders
to the burden of a peculiarly comic cross.
Almost all Europeans in Morocco must of necessity be merchants, if not
they must be consuls, for there is hardly any other industry open to them
to choose. The missionaries bought and sold nothing, they were not
consuls; still they ate and drank, lived in good houses, and though not
rich, yet passed their lives in what the Jews called luxury. So they
agreed to call them followers of Epicurus, for, as they said, "this
Epicurus was a devil who did naught but eat and drink." The nickname
stuck, and changed into "Bikouros" by the Moors, who thought it was a
title of respect, became the name throughout Morocco for a missionary.
One asks as naturally for the house of Epicurus on coming to a town as
one asks for the "Chequers" or the "Bells" in rural England. Are you
"Bikouros"? says a Moor, and thinks he does you honour by the inquiry;
but the recipients of the name are fit to burst when they reflect on
their laborious days spent in the surgery, their sowing seed upon the
marble quarries of the people's hearts, and that the Jews in their
malignity should charge upon them by this cursed name, that they live in
Morocco to escape hard work, and pass their time in eating and in
quaffing healths a thousand fathoms deep.
Often at night, awake and looking at the stars and trying to remember
which was which, I have broken into laughter when I thought upon the
name, and laughed until the Arabs all sat up alarmed, for he who laughs
at night laughs at his hidden wickedness, or else because a devil has
possessed his soul.
Cargo, of course, was not expected in the _Rabat_, and as by four o'clock
in the afternoon the last few passengers had come aboard, it might have
been expected that the ship would put to sea. Not so, the captain gave
it as his opinion that it was best to wait till midnight so as to arrive
in Mazagan by breakfast time; so for eight hours we waited in sight of
Casa Blanca, swinging up and down, giddy and miserable, and in the
intervals of misery tried to fish.
Next morning we were off Djedida (New Town), as the Arabs call Mazagan.
A yellowish town, peopled by Jews, Moors, and innumerable yellow dogs.
Camels blocked all the streets, and above the consul's flag-staffs a
single palm-tree reared its head, fluttering its feathers over the
sandstone walls built by the Portuguese in the days when they were
navigators, adventurers, and over-ran the world, after the fashion of the
modern Englishman. The batteries built by the Moors or by the Portuguese
are most ingeniously constructed to expose the gunners, and to batter
down the town they are supposed to guard. Outside a street of
beehive-looking huts of reeds, each with its little garden, its ten or
twelve dogs, thirteen or fourteen children, three or four donkeys, and a
score of mangy fowls, and with a bush or two of castor oil plants
sticking up in the sand at every corner of the street, gives quite an air
of equatorial Africa or Paraguay.
Right in the middle of the Plaza a squadron of some fifty Arab irregular
soldiers guard about two hundred prisoners. These latter, heavily ironed
and half-starved, were of the tribe of the Rahamna, who for the past
twelve months had been in open rebellion against their liege lord the
Sultan, Abdul Aziz, whom may God defend. The system in Morocco when a
Sultan dies is for the tribes who think they may be strong enough, to
refuse to pay all taxes, and then the Sultan is obliged to come in person
with an army to discuss the matter, to fight, and if he wins send baskets
full of heads to be stuck up on the chief cities' gates, and squads of
prisoners like the band I saw in Mazagan to rot in prison till death
relieves them of their miserable lives. Every one of the prisoners in
the Plaza must have known that any chance of his release was small,
indeed, they knew they were going to be half-starved, either in a dark
cellar-like prison, or in an open courtyard exposed to sun and cold, for
the Morocco Government allows no rations to its prisoners, and those who
have no friends soon die of hunger. {26} Still they were not apparently
much put about. People stood talking to them, flies settled on their
eyelids, dogs licked their sores, horses and camels jostled against them,
the sun poured on their heads, and still they did not suffer in the way
our prisoners suffer, for they were not cut off in sentiment from those,
their brothers in Mohammed, who stood round and talked to them to pass
the time. Pious old ladies, young philanthropists and novelists in
search of "copy" who visit Tangier go into "visibilio," as the Italians
say, over the prisoners in the prison, with its flat horseshoe arches at
the door, so similar in style to those at Toledo in the old synagogue,
now turned into a church. {27}
All those good people and each journalist, all have their word about the
darkness, chains, and the want of air; the misery, the crowding at the
door to take the chocolate (which should have been tobacco) which the
pious lady brings. Each tourist sends home his badly written paragraph
to his favourite paper, and goes away lamenting over the barbarism of
Mohammedans; and, if he is a "glorious empire" man, thinks of the time
when, under the Union Jack, the Moorish prisoner shall have a number and
a cell, tin pan to wash in, Bible to read, and all shall be apparelled in
Queen Victoria's livery, until they purge themselves of their contempt
and promise to amend their naughty lives.
One thing they all forget when writing of a Moorish prison, that, in
spite of dirt, of chains, of want of air, of herding all together in a
den, they are happier than prisoners with us, for they can speak, exhale
their misery in conversation; they still are men, and leave the prison
men, instead of devils, hating all mankind like those who, under our
inhuman silent plan, eat out their miserable "terms" cursing the fools
who in their foolish kindness hit on a device to turn men into stone.
{28} And so I leave the prisoners in the square, thinking as an old Arab
says: "It looks as if the Sultan wished to finish with all the
Mussulmen." At any rate, since the last Sultan's death, three years ago,
thousands must have been killed in war, died by starvation, or rotted
miserably to death in prisons underneath the ground.
It being a feast day of the Jews all stores were closed in Mazagan, for
in Morocco all the retail business is in Jews' hands, and no religion
that I know of seems to have so many days on which men may not work; and
therefore it is strange that men have not yet flocked to join their
faith.
At last the steamer shakes itself free from the allurements of Mazagan
and steers almost due west to clear the reef, which, jutting out about
six miles, makes Mazagan the least exposed of all the open harbours on
the coast. As Mazagan is distant only three days from the city of
Morocco it may be destined some day to a glorious commercial future, with
railways, docks, smoke, pauperism, prostitution in the streets,
twenty-five faiths instead of one, drunkards, cabs, bicycles and all our
vices, so different in their nature from those the Arabs brought from
Arabia and have clung to in the same way they cling to their religion,
dress, speech, their alphabet, and their peculiar mode of life.
As we steamed out, the town of Azimur was seen under our lee, about
twelve miles from Mazagan, situated on a hill close to the river Um er
R'bieh, once an important harbour but long silted up by sand. The
harbour, once the resort of pirates, is now silted up, and the
remembrance of the pirates' deeds is still kept fresh in people's
memories by a great store of old Delft plates, either taken by pirates in
the merry days gone by, or sent from Holland {29a} in the times when
vessels from the Dutch ports traded along the coast. To-day the foreign
merchants buy them or exchange them for modern china, and their
inglorious end is to hang on a wall beside the so-called artistic
plenishings of ladies' over-gimcracked drawing-rooms.
As we turn southwards, after clearing the long reef, it seems as if we
had already entered another zone. The hills along the beach become more
arid, the plains all stony or covered with low, thorny scrub. Saffi, the
hottest place on all the coast, melts past, merely a film of white
against the reddish background, and in the distance the foot-hills rising
to the Atlas now appear. The largest of them Jebel Hadid, the Mount of
Iron standing out like an enormous box {29b} above the coast.
A Yemeni Jew has come on board, bound for Mogador, the city of the Jews.
Short, black-eyed, greasy-locked, and with a red fez bound round with a
woman's shawl, he, like St. Paul, is of a mean appearance. Still he has
much to tell about Arabia, and the province from which he comes. It
appears that near Sannaar, in South Arabia, there is a land called
Beni-Mousa. In this favoured spot the inhabitants are all Jews, and none
of them are known to speak untruths, at least so says their
representative on board the ship. This tribe, he says, is that of
Shebatat. A river, which bounds their country, has so fierce a current
that rocks and stones are moved along by it, and no mere Gentile can
cross the stream. Upon its banks grow two tall trees (Sandaracs, he
thinks), which bend across to one another and salute by saying, "Shabat
Sholom." On Saturday they do not bend over to one another, and keep no
watch; therefore, on Saturday alone can Gentiles cross the wondrous
river, as on that day only does the stream abate its force. All this is
true, and I myself am much confirmed in my opinion of its truth, because
at night this same veracious Jew produced out of a bag a bottle of spirit
(majia) made from dates, and, drinking it, got most uproarious, shouting
and singing, falling repeatedly upon the winch to the great delight of
all the Moors, and towards midnight avowing his intention of swimming
back to the Yemen so that my henchman Haj Mohammed es Swani, who had been
a sailor, had to make him fast to a ringbolt in the deck. And as in
Arabic without a particle after the fashion of a child or negro, I tried
to express my astonishment at such a line of conduct in so grave a man,
to a young Arab who stood near me, without a smile he answered, in most
perfect English, "I am not certain if I understand all that you say, sir,
but I speak English pretty well." In outward visible appearance he was
an Arab of the usual kind, bare legs and yellow slippers, shaved head and
fez with rather grimy turban, dirty white drawers, and brown djellaba
{30a} with the hood of it over his head after the fashion of a friar. It
seemed he was an acrobat from the province of the Sus, from the
celebrated Zowia {30b} of Si Hamed O'Musa, the patron saint of all the
acrobats throughout Morocco. Not far from the Wad {30c} Nun is situate
the district called Taseruelt, and in that district the famous patron
saint of acrobats is buried at the above named Zowia. From thence a
large proportion of the Arab troops of acrobats, who perform at our
music-halls, set forth to tumble round the world.
My English speaking acrobat had terminated an engagement at the South
London Music Hall, and was returning to resteep himself in the true faith
at home, and also, it is possible, to rest. He told me that his ambition
was to marry a European girl, and that his choice would be a German, for
he said, "German girls mind the house and sew; English are prettier, but
will not sew, and, besides that, they are always drinking plenty." Out
of the mouths of babes and heathens I think a reflection on our national
femininity comes with some force. As we stand talking of the "Empire,"
"Pavilion," "Oxford" and other "halls," both in the provinces and the
metropolis, the island which half shelters the roadstead of Mogador came
into view.
Kissed by the north-east trade which just envelops Mogador and about half
a league of country outside the town, the city, dazzlingly white, lies in
the sun, well meriting the name of Sueira, that is, the picture, given by
the Moors. Founded in 1760, by order of the Sultan Sidi Mohammed, the
plan made by an engineer from France, whose name, according to the Arabs,
was Cornut, the city (supposed by some to be the ancient Erythraea) is
the most regularly built and most commercial of all the empire. A little
desert, varying in breadth from three to thirteen miles, cuts off the
city from the fertile lands. Sand, and more sand, fine, white, and
almost always altering in position, gives an idea of the Sahara made in
miniature. The little river Wad el Ghoreb runs near the town, and in the
middle of the water a former Sultan has built a palace founded on the
sand; but though the north-east trade blows almost all the year, and when
it rains the rain comes down in torrents, the palace has not fallen, and,
as it never was inhabited, it remains a monument of human folly,
surmounting all the powers of providence. Jews, Jews, and still more
Jews possess the place; they make their Kidush, keep their Purim,
Cabanas, and New Year; eat adafina, broaden their business and
phylacteries, are hospitable, domestic in their habits, each man revered
in his own house as if he were a prophet, and all the business of the
place is in their hands.
Grave, reserved Jews in gabardines, smart up-to-date young Jews in white
straw hats and European clothes, daughters of Israel with handkerchiefs
bound round their heads and hanging down their backs, others in Paris
fashions, but all with hair like horses' tails, are everywhere. Donah
and Zorah, Renia, Estrella, Rahel, and Zulica, with Azar, Slimo, Baruch,
and Mordejai are seen in every street; they sit in shops, lean out of
windows, lounge upon the beach, walk about slowly as if they stepped on
eggs, are kind in private life, cruel in business; they keep up much
communication with Houndsditch, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Jerusalem, and other
centres of the "community," speaking an Arabic garnished with English,
seasoned with Spanish, peppered with Shillah {32} words, and rendered as
intelligible as Chinook by the thick utterance with which they speak. An
amiable race, business once over, and charitable amongst themselves; what
is called moral, that is, their customs do not tolerate prostitution, and
husbands love their wives, children their parents, and their home life
resembles that which writers say is to be seen in England, but which
experience generally shows is oftener found in France, where families go
out together and men are not ashamed to play with children, and to sit
drinking coffee out of doors beside their grandmothers.
So to this New Jerusalem, after a five days' voyage, the _Rabat_ arrived,
and anchored inside the island where the Sultan has a great open prison;
there his rebels are confined, and daily die, both those who live and
those whom death releases. An iron steamboat, much like a tramp, in
shape, but armed with four small guns, and commanded by a German officer,
displays the red flag of Morocco, identical in colour with the well-known
flag which in Hyde Park has braved a thousand meetings, and around which
the "comrades" flock to listen when Quelch holds forth on social wrongs,
or Mr. Hyndman speaks on India, and outside the crowd the bourgeois feels
a shrinking in the stomach as he smooths his hat to give him countenance.
We bid the microcosmic craft good-bye, and go ashore stuffed in a boat
with Moors and Jews, some Spaniards, two Franciscan friars, eight or ten
bird-cages, and land to find the Jewish feast proceeding, the hotels all
full, the shops all shut, and the whole town delivered over to the
mercies of Jehovah, who, caring little for a mere Christian, left us to
walk the baking street four mortal hours, till just when we were going to
buy a tent to sleep in, Lutaif remembered that he had a dear and valued
friend who lived in Mogador. Comment upon his memory seemed injudicious.
His friend, Mr. Zerbib, a missionary, received us into his hospitable
house. We straight forgot our troubles and the Jews' unseasonable feast,
and fell discussing with our host whether or not the thing in Europe
known as progress had proved a blessing or a curse, sporadically
introduced into Morocco by the waifs and strays, the tourists, traders,
runaway sailors, and the rest who, on the coast, act as the vanguard of
the army of the light.