MY journey all next day lay through low hills of reddish argillaceous
earth, cut into gullies here and there by the winter rains, and clothed
with sandaracs, Suddra (Zizyphus lotus) and a few mimosas. The hills
sloped upwards to the wall-like Atlas, and on the left the desert-looking
plain of Morocco, broken but by the flat-topped hill known as the Camel's
Neck (Hank el Gimel), and bounded by the mountains above Demnat, and the
curve the Atlas range makes to the north-east so as to almost circle
round Morocco city. We search our hearts, that is, I search my own and
the others' hearts and try to persuade myself that we have acted
prudently in not attempting the Imintanout road. But when did prudence
console anybody? Rashness at times may do so, but the prudent generally
(I think) are more or less ashamed of the virtue they profess. The
Moors, of course, were glad we had risked nothing, for though no cowards
when the danger actually presents itself, indeed, in many cases (as at
the battles with the Spaniards in 1861) showing more desperate courage
than anyone except the Soudanese, still they are so imaginative, or what
you please, that if men talk of danger they will take a five days'
journey to avoid the places where hypothetic peril lurks. Mohammed el
Hosein, being in his character of ex-slave dealer, what the French call a
"lapin," talked of his adventures in the past, told how he had smuggled
slaves into the coast towns almost before the Christian consul's eyes,
sung Shillah songs in a high, quavering falsetto, and boasted of his
prowess in the saddle, occasionally bursting into a suppressed chuckle at
the idea of taking a Christian into Tarudant.
Almost before we were aware of it, on going down a slope between some
bushes, we found ourselves right in the middle of a crowded market.
These country markets are a feature of Morocco, and, I think, of almost
every Arab country. Often they are held miles away from any house, but
generally on an upland open space with water near. When not in use they
reminded me of the "rodeos," on to which the Gauchos, in La Plata, used
to drive their cattle to count, to mark, part out, or to perform any of
the various duties of an "estanciero's" {97} life. The markets usually
are known by the day of the week on which they are held, as Sok el Arba,
Sok el Thelatta, el Jamiz, and so forth; the Arabs using Arba, Tnain,
Thelatta, "one, two, three" etc., to designate their days. This market,
in particular, I knew to be the Sok es Sebt, but thought we had been some
distance from it, and all my assurance was required to make my way
amongst at least two thousand people with the dignity which befits a
Moorish gentleman upon a journey. Arabs and Berbers, Jews and Haratin
(men of the Draa province, of mixed race) were there, all talking at the
fullest pitch of strident voices, all armed to the teeth. Ovens with
carcases of sheep roasting entire inside them, cows, camels, lines of
small brown tents made to be packed upon a mule and called "Kituns,"
dust, dust, and more dust, produced the smell, as of wild beasts, which
emanates from Eastern crowds. Moors from Morocco city in white fleecy
haiks I carefully avoided, as being my equals in supposititious rank,
and, therefore, likely to address me. Berbers in striped brown rags, and
wrapped in the curious mantle, called an "achnif" in Shillah, made of
black wool with fringes and an orange-coloured eye, about two feet in
length, woven into the back, abounded; through them I shoved my horse,
not even looking down when the poor fellows lifted my cloak and kissed
the hem, and, passing through majestically, I heard some mutter, "That
Sherif is very proud for one so thin," fat being amongst Moors a sign of
wealth, as it was evidently amongst the Jews, if we are to take the
testimony of the Old Testament as worthy of belief.
To ride right through a market and pass on would have looked suspicious,
as markets in Morocco form a sort of medium for exchange of news, in the
same manner that in old times the churchyard was a kind of club; witness
the story of the elder who was heard to say--"he would not give all the
sermons in the world for five good minutes of the churchyard clash." So,
after having gone about a quarter of a mile, we got under some olive
trees (zeitun, from whence the Spanish aceituna, an olive), and, sitting
in the shade, sent Swani to the market to buy some "Schwah," that is,
some of the carcase of a sheep roasted whole "en barbecue." Various poor
brothers in Mohammed came to assure themselves of my complete good
health; but Mohammed el Hosein informed them the Sherif was ill, and,
giving them some copper coins, they testified to the existence of the one
God, and hoped that He might in His mercy soon make me well. Being
schooled as to the form to be observed, I looked up slowly, and, raising
one hand, muttered as indistinctly as I could that God was great, and
that we all were in His hands. This pleased Mohammed el Hosein so much
that when we were alone he assured me I must have been born a Sherif, and
could I but speak Arabic a little less barbarously that our journey would
have been productive, as Sherifs make it a practice, whilst giving small
copper to the poor, to cadge upon their own account from the better
classes, of course for Allah and His Holy Prophet's sake. Lutaif, who in
his character of Syrian, talked almost incessantly to anyone we met,
elicited that this particular market called "Sok es Sebt," the "Sixth Day
Market," is one of four held in Morocco on a Saturday, thus showing that
the Jews have got most of the trade into their hands, and do not care
that markets should be held upon their holy day. We tore the "Schwah"
between our fingers, in the "name of God"; it tasted much like leather
cooked in suet; we passed the ablutionary water over our hands, moving
them to and fro to dry, drank our green tea, and were preparing for a
siesta when it was rumoured that an English Jew was soon expected to
arrive. Having still less acquaintance with Yiddish than with Arabic,
and being certain that the English Israelite would soon detect me, and
fall on one shoulder exclaiming "S'help me, who would have thought of
meeting a fellow-countryman out 'ere!" I saddled up and started as
majestically as I felt I could upon my way. The start was most
magnificent, Swani and Mohammed helping to arrange my clothes when I had
clambered to my seat, and all went well with the exception that no one
happening to hold Lutaif's off stirrup, and the huge Moorish mule saddle,
called a "Sirijah," being so slackly girthed, that it is almost
impossible to scale it all alone, he fell into the dust, and Ali coming
up to help with a broad grin received a hearty "Jejerud Din!" ("Curse
your religion!"), which caused a coolness during the remainder of the
journey. Lutaif, though a good Christian and as pious as are most
dwellers on the Lebanon, yet came from the country where, as Arabs say,
"the people all curse God," referring to the imprecation on their
respective creeds, which is most faithfully taken and received between
Maronite and Druse, Christian and Moslem, and all the members of the
various jarring sects who dwell under the shadow of the cedars on those
most theologic hills. Nestling into the gorges of the hills, and
crowning eminences, were scattered villages of the true Atlas type, built
all of mud, flat roofed, the houses rising one over the other like a
succession of terraces or little castles, and being of so exactly the
same shade as the denuded hills on which they stand as to be almost
impossible to make out till you are right upon them. At times so like is
village to hill, and hill to village, that I have taken an outstanding
mound of earth to be a house, and many times have almost passed the
village, not seeing it was there.
Riding along and dangling my feet out of the stirrups to make the agony
of the short stirrup leather, hung behind the girths, endurable, it
struck me what peaceful folks the Arabs really were. Here was a
traveller almost totally unarmed, for the Barcelona and Marseilles
"snap-haunces" we had borrowed at the Palm-Tree House were hardly to be
called offensive weapons; without a passport, travelling in direct
defiance of the Treaty of Madrid, in Arab clothes, asserting that he was
an Arab or a Turk (as seemed convenient). So, unattended, for defensive
purposes, I rode along quite safely, or relatively safely, except from
all the risks that wait upon the travellers in any country of the world,
such as arise from stumbling horses and the like, fools, and the act of
God.
What was it that stopped a band of Arabs on the lookout for plunder?
What stood between us and a party of the "Noble Shillah race"? Either or
both could easily have plundered us and thrown our bodies into some silo
and no one would have known. The truth is, in Morocco, when one reflects
upon the inconveniences of the country, the lonely roads, the places
apparently designed by Providence to make men brigands, and the fact that
almost every Arab owns a horse and is armed at least with a stout knife,
that the inhabitants are either cowardly to a degree, are law-abiding to
a fault, or else deprived by nature of initiative to such extent as to be
quite Arcadian in the foolish way in which they set about to rob. When I
remembered Mexico not twenty years ago, before Porfirio Diaz turned the
brigands, who used to swarm on every road, into paid servants of the
Government, men on a journey from the Rio Grande to San Luis Potosi all
made their wills and started weighted down with Winchesters, pistols and
bowie-knives, besides a stout machete stuck through their saddle-girths.
So Morocco seemed to me a perfect paradise.
In the republic of the Eagle and the Cactus, the tramways running to the
bullfights at Tacubaya frequently were held up by armed horsemen and the
passengers plundered of everything they had about them. Stage coaches
often were attacked by "road agents" and everyone inside of them stripped
naked, although the robbers, being caballeros, generally distributed some
newspapers amongst them to cover up their nakedness. In the old
monarchy, murder was pretty frequent, but it was chiefly the result of
private vengeance, and though the tribes fought bloody battles now and
then, a travelling stranger seldom was molested by them, except he got in
the way.
Real highway robbery seemed not to flourish in Morocco, perhaps because
the atmosphere of monarchy was less congenial to it than the free air of
a republic, though that could surely not have been the case, as virtue is
a plant that grows from the top downwards, and both the President and
Sultan, at the time I write about, are robbers to the core.
Occasionally in the Shereefian Empire, a Jew returning from a fair was
set upon and spoiled, and now and then in lowered voices, as you jogged
along the road, were pointed out to you the place where Haramin {102a}
had slain a man thirty or forty years ago.
This is the case in all those portions of Morocco where Christians
travel; that is to Fez, to Tetuan, from Mazagan to the city of Morocco,
and generally about Tangier, the coast towns and the Gharb. {102b}
Outside those spheres the case is different; and in the Riff, the Sus,
Wad Nun, or even a few miles outside of Mequinez, a Christian's life, or
even that of a Mohammedan from India, Persia or the East, would not be
worth a "flus." {102c} We rested for our mid-day halt upon the open
plain under the shadow of a great rock, the heat too great to eat, and
passed the time smoking and drinking from our porous water-jars, until
the "enemy," as the Arabs call the Sun, sank down a little; then in the
cool we went on through a wilderness of cactus and oleanders, almond and
fig trees, with palms and apricots, till sandy paths zigzagging between
aloe hedges with a few tapia walls backed by a ruined castle, betokened
we were near Asif-el-Mal. Asif means river in Shillah, and at the foot
of the crumbling walls a river ran, making things green and most
refreshing to the eyes after ten hours of fighting with the enemy,
enduring dust, and kicking at our animals after the fashion which all men
adopt upon a journey; not that it helps the animals along, but seems to
be a vent for the impatience of the traveller. Norias {103a} creak, a
camel with a donkey and a woman harnessed to one of them, water pours
slowly out of the revolving "Alcuzas," {103b} and at the trough the
maidens of the village stand waiting to fill their water-jars, shaped
like an amphora, which they carry on the shoulders with a strap braced
round their hands. Asif-el-Mal boasts a Mellah, and Jews at once came
out to offer to trade with us, to talk, and hear the news. Intelligent
young Jews, Moises, Slimo, and Mordejai with Baruch, and all the other
names, familiar to the readers of the Old Testament, flock round us. All
can read and write, can keep accounts, as well as if they had been born
in Hamburg; most have ophthalmia, some are good-looking, pale with great
black eyes, and every one of them seems to be fashioned with an extra
joint about the back. Yet hospitable, civil and a link with Europe,
which they have never seen; but about which they read, and whose affairs
they follow with the keenest interest, all knowing Gladstone's name and
that of Salisbury; all longing for the day when they can put on European
clothes and blossom out arrayed after the gorgeous fashion of the tribe
in Mogador. Each of them wears a love-lock hanging upon his shoulder,
and, without doubt, if they were but a little bit more manly-looking,
they would be as fine young men as you could wish to see.
Their race almost controls the town, Berbers are few and hardly any Arabs
but the Sheikh and his immediate following live in the place. A proof
the land is good, the soil productive, and the water permanent; for when
did Jews set up their tabernacles on an unproductive soil, in a poor
town, or follow the fortunes of any one who was not rich? Their chief,
Hassan Messoud, a venerable man, dressed in a long blue gown, a spotted
belcher pocket-handkerchief over his head and hanging down behind in a
most unbecoming style, advanced to greet us. Perhaps he was the finest
Eastern Jew I ever saw; a very Moses in appearance, as he might have been
on Sinai a little past his prime, and yet before the ingratitude of those
he served had broken him. Beside him walks his daughter, a Rebecca, or
Zohara, bearing fresh butter in a lordly tin dish, and bread baked upon
pebbles, with the impression of the stones upon the underside. Such
bread the chosen people have left in Spain, and still in Old Castille
amongst the "Cristianos Rancios," who hate the very name of Jew, and
think that the last vestige of their customs has long left Spain, the
self-same bread is eaten at Easter, if I remember rightly; and so,
perhaps, the true believer (Christian this time) unwittingly bakes bread
which yet may damn him black to all eternity.
Hassan comes quickly into the tent, and bids us welcome in Jewish Arabic;
and waiting cautiously till even our own Moors have left the tent, breaks
into Spanish and asks me of what nationality I am. I tell him from
"God's country," and he says, "Ingliz," to which I answer, "Yes, or
Franciz, for both are one." He grins, squatting close to the door of the
tent, servile, but dignified, full six feet high, his black beard turning
grey, and hands large, fat, and whitish, and which have never done hard
work. We talk, and then Hassan takes up his parable. Glory to Allah he
is rich, and all the Governors are his dear friends, that is they owe him
money; and as he talks the old-time Spanish rhyme comes to my memory,
which, talking of some Jews who came to see a certain king, speaks of
their honeyed words, and how they praised their people and boasted of
their might.
"Despues vinieron Don Salomon y Don Ezequiel,
Con sus dulces palabras parecen la miel,
Hacen gran puja, de los de Israel."
And yet Hassan was but easy of dispense, wearing the clothes of an
ordinary Morocco Jew, with nothing to indicate his wealth.
As we sat talking to him of the exchange in Europe; about the
Rothschilds, Sassoons, Oppenheims, and others of the "chosen" who bulk
largely in the money columns of the daily press of Europe (all of whom he
knew by name), and interchanging views about the late Lord Beaconsfield,
whom Hassan knew as Benjamin ben Israel, the daughters of God's folk came
out upon the house-tops, dressed in red and yellow, with kerchiefs on
their heads, eyes like the largest almonds, lips like full-blown
pomegranates, and looked with pride upon their headman talking to the
Sherif or Christian Caballer, whichever he might be, on equal terms.
Strange race, so intellectual, so quick of wit, so subtle, and yet
without the slightest dignity of personal bearing; handsome, and yet
without the least attraction, conquering the Arabs as they conquer
Saxons, Latins, or all those with whom they come in contact upon that
modern theatre of war--the Stock Exchange. Hassan Messoud having
protested that by the God of Abraham we were all welcome, retired and
left us to pitch our tent upon a dust-heap in a courtyard, between some
ruined houses and the village wall.
Under the moonlight, the distant plain looked like a vast, steely-blue
sea, the deep, red roads all blotted out, the palms and olives standing
up exactly as dead stalks of corn stand up in an October wheat-field.
The omnipresent donkeys and camels of the East hobbled or straying in the
foreground beneath the walls, and the mysterious, silent, white-robed
figures wandering about like ghosts, the town appeared to me to look as
some Morisco village must have looked in Spain when the Mohammedans
possessed the land, and villages brown, ruinous, and hedged about with
cactus like Asif-el-Mal, clung to the crags, and nestled in the valleys
of the Sierra de Segura, or the Alpujarra.
At daybreak, Hassan Messoud appeared with breakfast at our tent, olives
and meat in a sauce of oil and pepper, not appetising upon an empty
stomach, but not to be refused without offence. Then, throwing milk upon
the ground from a small gourd, he blessed us, and invoked the God of
Israel to shield us on our way. A worthy, kindly, perhaps usurious, but
most hospitable Israelite, not without guile (or property), a type of
those Jews of the Middle Ages from whom Shakespeare took Shylock, and in
whose hands the lords, knights, squires, and men-at-arms were as a
Christian stockbroker, cheat he as wisely as he can, is to-day in the
hands of any Jew who, a few months ago, retailed his wares in
Houndsditch; but who, the Exchange attained to, walks its precincts as
firmly as it were Kodesh, and he a priest after the order of Melchizedec.
Riding along the trail which runs skirting the foothills of the Atlas,
and forces us to dive occasionally into the deep dry "nullah," for there
are only six or seven bridges in all Morocco, and none near the Atlas,
the vegetation changes, and again we pass dwarf rhododendrons, arbutus,
and kermes-oak, and enter into a zone of plants like that of southern
Spain, with the exception that here the mignonette becomes a bush, and
common golden rod grows four feet high, with a thick woody stem. White
poplars, walnuts, elms, and a variety of ash are planted round the
houses. From the eaves hang strings of maize cobs; bee-hives like those
the Moors left in Spain, merely a hollow log of wood, or roll of cork,
lie in the gardens; grape vines climb upon the trees, producing grapes,
long, rather hard, claret-coloured, and aromatic, the best, I think, in
all the world, and which have fixed themselves upon the memory of my
palate, as have the oranges of Paraguay.
About mid-day, upon a little eminence, we sight the tower of the
Kutubieh, the glory of Morocco; but the city is, so to speak, hull down,
and the white tower seems to hang suspended in the air without
foundations; indeed, it looks so thin at the great distance from which we
see it, as to be but a mere white line standing up in the plain and
pointing heavenwards, that is, if towers built by false prophets do not
point to hell. All day my horse, really the best I ever rode in all
Morocco, had been uneasy, wanting to lie down; so disregarding the advice
of Mohammed el Hosein to prick him with my knife and pray to God,
somewhat prosaically I got off, and, unsaddling him, found his shoulder
fearfully swollen, and understood how I came possessed of a horse the
like of which few Christians, even for money, get hold of from a Moor. I
saw at once he had a fistulous sore right through the withers; incurable
without an operation and a long rest. Then I believed what Mohammed el
Hosein had told me, that the horse was from the other side of the Atlas
and had been used in ostrich-hunting, for a better and more fiery beast I
never rode, and though thin, rough, and in the worst condition, had he
been sound-backed, quite fit to carry me to Timbuctoo.
The Arabs have an idea upon a journey that a man should dismount as
seldom as he can. They say dismounting and remounting tires the horse
more than a league of road, they therefore sit the livelong day without
dismounting from their seat. The Gauchos, on the contrary, say it helps
a horse to get off now and then and lift the saddle for a moment,
loosening the girth so that the air may get between the saddle and the
back. This the Moors hold to be anathema, and Spaniards, Mexicans, and
most horsemen of the south agree that the saddle should not be shifted
till the horse is cool, on pain of getting a sore back. Who shall decide
when horsemen disagree? However, the Gauchos all girth very tightly, and
the Arabs scarcely draw the girth at all, their saddles repose on seven
(the number is canonical) thick saddle cloths, and are kept in their
place more by the breastplate than the girth. It may be therefore that,
given the loose girth, short stirrup leathers, and their own flowing
clothes, personal convenience has more to do with the custom of not
getting off and on than regard for the welfare of their beast. The Arabs
in Morocco, though fond of horses, treat them roughly and foolishly; at
times they cram them with unnecessary food, at times neglect them; their
feet they almost always let grow too long, their legs they spoil by too
tight hobbling, and if upon a journey their horse tires they ride him
till he drops.
Across the mountains and amongst the wilder desert tribes, this is not
so, and travellers all agree that the wild Arab really loves his horse;
but he has need of him to live, whereas inside Morocco horses are used
either for war or luxury, or because the man who rides them cannot afford
a mule. The pacing mule, throughout North Africa, is as much valued as
he was in Europe in the Middle Ages, and commands a higher price than any
horse; yet whilst allowing that he is dogged as a Nonconformist, on the
road, sober and comfortable, to my eye, a man wrapped in a white
burnouse, perched on a saddle almost as large as the great bed of Ware,
looks fitter to be employed to guard a harem than to enjoy the company of
the houris inside. Necessity (in days gone by) has often forced me to
ride horses with a "flower" {108} on their backs or with a sore which
rendered every step they made as miserable to me as it was hell to them;
but as on these occasions I rode either before an Indian Malon, {109a} or
for the dinner of a whole camp, so I at once determined that,
notwithstanding any risk, I would purvey me a new horse at the next
stopping place. As it turned out, the changing horses and the talk which
ensued, as the owner of the horse and I tried to deceive each other about
our beasts, was the occasion of my never reaching Tarudant. At least I
think so, and if it was, some better traveller will do that which I
failed in doing, write a much better book than any I could write, and if
he be a practical and pushful man spare neither horses on the road, nor
stint the public of one iota of his "facts," for to the pushful is the
kingdom of the earth. As to what sort of kingdom they have made of it,
it is beyond the scope of this poor diary to enquire.
We crossed the Wad el Kehra, and early in the afternoon tied up our
animals under a fig-tree, with a river running hard by, a stubble field
in front, and Amsmiz itself crowning a hill upon our right. Amongst the
"algarobas," {109b} fig-trees and poplars, swallows flit, having come
south, or perhaps migrated north from some more southern land.
At the entrance of the town stood the palace of the Kaid, an enormous
structure made of mud and painted light rose-pink, but all in ruins, the
crenellated walls a heap of rubbish, the machicolated towers blown up
with gunpowder. The Kaid, it seems, oppressed the people of the town and
district beyond the powers of even Arabs and Berbers to endure; so they
rebelled, and to the number of twelve thousand besieged the place, took
it by storm, and tore it all to pieces to search for money in the walls.
Most people in Morocco if they have money, hide it in the walls of their
abode, but the Kaid of Amsmiz was wiser, and had sent all his to Mogador.
He fought to the last, then cutting all his women's throats, mounted his
favourite horse and almost unattended "maugre all his enemies, through
the thickest of them he rode," leaving his stores well-dressed with
arsenic, so that, like Samson in his fall, he killed more of his enemies
than in his life. To-day he is said to live in Fez, greatly respected, a
quiet old Arab with a fine white beard, whose greatest pleasure is to
tell his rosary.
Curious how little the Oriental face is altered by the storms of life. I
knew one, Haj Mohammed el --, --a scoundrel of the deepest dye--who in
his youth had poisoned many people, had tortured others, assassinated
several with his own hand, and yet was a kindly, courteous, venerable
gentleman, whose hobby was to buy any eligible young girl he heard of, to
stock his harem. One day I ventured to remark that he was getting rather
well on in years to think of such commodities. He answered; "Yes, but
then I buy them as you Christians buy pictures--to adorn my house; by
Allah, my heirs will be the gainers by my mania." Yet the man's face was
quiet and serene, his eyes bright as a sailor's, his countenance as
little marred by wrinkles as those one sees upon the Bishops' benches in
the House of Lords; and as he stroked his beard, and told his beads, he
seemed to me a patriarch after the type of those depicted in the Old
Testament. Perhaps it is the lack of railways, with their clatter,
smoke, and levelling of all mankind to the most common multiple; but
still it is the case--an Eastern scoundrel's face is finer far than that
a Nonconformist Cabinet Minister displays, all spoiled with lines, with
puckers round the mouth, a face in which you see all natural passion
stultified, and greed and piety--the two most potent factors in his
life--writ large and manifest.
An orange grove, backed by a cane-brake, with the canes fluttering like
flags, was near to us; cows, goats, and camels roamed about the outskirts
of the town, as in Arcadia--that is, of course, the Arcadia of our
dreams--or of Theocritus.
Jews went and came, saluting every one, and being answered: "May Allah
let you finish out your miserable life"; but yet as pleased as if they
had been blessed. Their daughters came, like Rebecca, to the well--all
carrying jars--unveiled, and yet secure, for in this land few Moors cast
eyes upon the daughter of a Jew.
Upon the ramparts, shadowy white-robed figures, with long guns, go to and
fro, guarding the town from hypothetic enemies. Through an arch, between
two palm-trees, the Kutabieh rises, distant and slender, and the white
haze around its base shows where Marakesh lies. On every hedge are
blackberries and travellers' joy; whilst a large honeysuckle, in full
flower, smells better than all Bucklersbury in simple time; a jay's harsh
cry sounds like the howl of a coyote, and Europe seems a million miles
away. In the evening light, the footpaths, which cut every hill, shine
out as they had all been painted by some clever artist, who had diluted
violet with gold.
Nothing reminds one that within half a mile a town, in which three
thousand people live, is near, except the footpaths which zigzag in and
out, crossing the fields, emerging out of woods, and intersecting one
another, as the rails seem to do at Clapham Junction. A fusillade tells
that a Sherif from the Sus has just arrived; all Amsmiz sally forth to
meet him mounted upon their best, charging right up to the Sherif, and
firing close to his horse--wheeling and yelling like Comanches--making a
picture shadowy, fantastic, and unbelievable to one who but three weeks
ago had left a land of greys. The Sherif's people open fire, and when
the smoke clears off the Sherif himself, mounted upon a fine white horse,
rides slowly forward, holding a green flag. The people fall into a long
line behind him, which, by degrees, is swallowed up under the horse-shoe
gateway of the town. Mohammed el Hosein, whom I had sent to look out for
a horse, appears with a little, undersized, and brachycephalic Shillah,
leading a young, black horse, unshod, with feet as long as coops, in good
condition and sound in wind and limb, and with an eye the blackest I have
seen in mortal horse--a sign of perfect temper; incontinently I determine
in my mind to buy him at all cost. We praise our horses--that is, the
Shillah praises his--but I, as a Sherif, am far too grand to do so at
first hand; so Swani lies like a plumber about mine--which stands and
kicks at flies, and looks--like horses do when one is just about to part
with them--much more attractive than one ever thought before.
The Shillah leads up his horse, which I pretend hardly to notice; and,
luckily for me, he speaks no Arabic. Then he looks at my horse, and, I
imagine, grabs him, for Swani springs upon the horse's back, and runs him
_ventre a terre_ over the rough stubble, and, stopping with a jerk--the
horse's feet cutting the ground like skates--gets off, and says that,
help him, Allah, the horse is fit for Lord Mohammed, and that I only sell
him because I am so tender-hearted about the sore upon his back.
This makes the Shillah think there is a "cat shut up inside," {112} for
no one sells a horse for a sore back amongst his tribe. We try his
horse--that is, Mohammed el Hosein makes him career about the field
without a bridle; and then I mount him, and display what I consider
horsemanship. Nine dollars and the horse? By Allah, seven; but the
Shillah, who has not tried my horse, looks at his colt, and says: "I
brought him up, fed him with camel's milk, rode him to war, and he is six
years old; nine dollars and the horse." We shake our heads; and he,
mounting his horse, yells like a Pampa Indian, and charging through the
cane-brake bare-backed, and with nothing but a string on one side of his
horse's neck, rushes up a steep bank and disappears, riding like a
Numidian. I say it was a pity I did not give the nine, but am assured
all is not over, and that the man has probably gone to bring back "a
bargain-striker" to complete the sale. Throughout Morocco, when animals
change hands, the bargaining lasts sometimes for a week; and at the last
a man appears, sometimes a passer-by, who is pressed into the
undertaking, who, seizing on the bargainers' right hands, drags them
together, and completes the deal.
In about half-an-hour our man comes back, bringing the local "Maalem,"
that is Smith, who talks and talks, and as he talks surveys me from the
corner of his eye. At last the Shillah yields, takes the seven dollars,
counts them with great attention, tapping each one of them upon a stone
to see if "it speaks true," and then mounting my horse essays its paces.
As it fell out the horse, which galloped like a roe, with Swani, set off
with a plunge which almost sent the Shillah over one side, and turning
flew to the mules and stopping by them refused to move a step. The
Shillah thought, of course, he had been done, and I had most reluctantly
to mount the horse and make him go. We give our word the horse is not a
jibber, and swear by Allah if he is, and the Shillah will send him back
to Mogador, he shall receive his money and his own horse on our return.
He takes our word at once and grasps my hand, puts his own bridle on my
horse, and bending down kisses his own horse underneath the neck, and
says, in Shillah, that he hopes I shall never ill-treat it, I promise
(and perform) and bid my own horse farewell after my fashion, and the
Shillah mounts and rides out of my life towards the town. A little dour
and fish-eyed, turbanless and ragged man, legs bowed from early riding,
face marked with scars, a long, curved knife stuck through a greasy belt,
hands on a horse as if they came from heaven; his farewell to his horse
was much more real than is the leavetaking of most men from their wives,
and moved me to the point of being about to call him back and break the
bargain, had I not reflected that the pang once over, the poor Shillah
would never in his life be at the head of so much capital. {114}
In less than half-an-hour the Maalem had shod the horse, shortening its
feet with an iron instrument shaped like a trowel, and nailing on the
shoes, which almost cover the whole foot, with home-made nails; he stays
to guard our animals (and spy upon us), and we prepare for our first al
fresco night.
Unlike America, where travellers sleep out of doors from Winnipeg to
Patagonia, in the East, except in crossing deserts, to sleep out of doors
without a tent is quite exceptional, and yet one never sleeps so soundly
as on a fine night beside a fire, one's head upon a saddle, feet to the
fire, and the stars to serve as clock. Even the wandering Arabs
generally carry tents, and thus, in my opinion, all through the East much
of the charm of camping out is lost. All that we do is a convention, and
Arabs are not savages, but on the contrary even the Bedouins are highly
civilised after their fashion, and the civilised man must always have a
roof, even of canvas, over his head to shut out nature. Not but that
your common Moors, like to "your Kerne of Ireland" in ancient days, do
not sleep out, for nothing is more common than on a rainy night, in
camping at a village, for the Sheikh to send a guard to watch a
traveller's horses, and for the guard to "liggen in their hoods" all the
night long. So at Amsmiz, under a fig tree, I made my camp, despite the
protests of Lutaif, the Maalem, {115} and Mohammed el Hosein, who joined
in saying that it was not decent for a man of my (Moorish) position to
camp outside the town. Swani himself was rather nervous, and, as it
turned out, there may have been some risk, for a strong "war-party," as
they would say upon the frontiers in America, drove almost every head of
cattle belonging to the town that very night. We slept as sound as
door-mice, and the Maalem, who kept watch with an old muzzle-loading
rifle stamped with the Tower mark, slept like a top, knowing the duty of
a most ancient guard, for during the night I thought I heard a noise of
people passing, and waking saw him fast asleep with the old rifle by his
side full cocked, and with a bunch of rushes in its muzzle either for
safety or for some other reason not made plain. Darwin relates the
peculiar and ineffaceable impression a night he slept under the stars,
upon the Rio Colorado, in Patagonia, made on him. He says the cold
blue-looking sky, the stars, the silence, the dogs keeping watch, the
horses feeding tied to their picket pins, and the sense of being cut off
from all mankind, appealed to him more than the beauty of the tropics,
the grandeur of the Andes, or anything that he remembered in his travels.
And he was right. Nothing appeals to civilised and to uncivilised alike
so much as a fine night when one sleeps near one's horse, and wakes
occasionally to listen to the noises of the night. Men from the counter,
from the university, riff-raff of towns cast out like dross into a
frontier territory, all feel the spell. The Indians and the Arabs feel
it, but do not know exactly what they feel; still, in a house, under a
roof, they pine for something which I am certain is the open air at
night.
'Tis said some ancient wise philosopher once took an Indian from the
southern Pampa and showed him all the delights, the pomps and vanities,
of Buenos Ayres: showed him the theatre with Christian girls dancing half
naked, took him to Mass at the cathedral, led him along the docks, let
him fare sumptuously, and then accompanied him to gaze upon the
multifarious faces of strange women, who used to lean from almost every
balcony and beckon to the stranger in that town; and then the Indian,
fed, instructed, with his mind enlarged by all the pomp and circumstance
of a Christian town, was asked to say if he liked Buenos Ayres or the
Pampa best. The story goes that, after pondering a while, the Indian
answered: "Buenos Ayres very large, beautiful things, very wonderful,
Christian women kind to poor Indian, but the Pampa best." A brutish
answer of a brute mind. 'Tis patent that the man was quite incapable of
understanding all he saw; no doubt our gospel truths were all unknown to
him, the philosopher who took him round to haunts of low debauchery
either a fool or knave; but on the other hand, riddle me this: how many
men of cultivation, education, and the rest have seen the Pampa, prairie,
desert, or the steppes, and putting off the shackles of their
bringing-up, stayed there for life, and become Indians, Arabs, Cossacks,
or Gauchos; but who ever saw an Indian, Arab, or wild man of any race
come of his own accord and put his neck into the noose of a sedentary
life, and end his days a clerk?
And so of faiths. The missionary for all his preaching would never mark
a sheep, had he but gospel truths alone to draw upon. What brings the
savage to the fold is interest, guns, cotton cloth, rum, tea, sugar,
coffee, and the thousand things for which a commentator might search the
Scriptures through from end to end and not find mentioned. In Central
Africa the Christian and the Moslem missionary are both at work marking
their sheep as fast as may be, and each one as much convinced as is the
other of the justice of his cause. With a fair field, without the
adventitious aids of Christian goods, the Moslem wins hands down.
The Christian comes and says "My negro friends, believe in Christ," and
the poor negro, always eager to believe in anything, assents, and then
the Christian sets him to black his boots, and all that negro's life he
never rises to an equality with his converter. Then comes the Mussulman
and cries "Only one God." The fetish worshipper who has had a dozen all
his life, thinks it a little hard to give them up, but does so, becomes a
Moslem, and is eligible to be Sultan, Basha, Vizier, Kaid, Sheikh, or
what not; so that, put rum and rifles on one side, let preaching be the
test, in fifty years from the Lake Chad to Cape Town there would not be a
single negro, except a few who stuck to their old gods, outside Islam.
I slept but fitfully, knowing if I could leave Amsmiz without suspicion
that I was sure to reach my journey's end. The night wore on, the
sapphire sky changing to steely-blue; as the muezzin called at the Feyer,
{117} great drops of dew hung from the leaves; up from the river rose the
metallic croaking of the frogs; Canopus was just setting; across the sky,
the mirage of the dawn stole stealthily, the mules stood hanging down
their heads upon the picket rope, a jackal howled somewhere far out upon
the plain; Allah perhaps looked down, and not far off from me baited
quite peacefully my (new) destrere on "herbes fine and good."