The mountain Breber tribes recognise the authority, but do not admit

the interference, of the Sultans of Morocco. His power over the

tribes of the plain, whether Breber or Arab, apparently severe and

sometimes terrible, is unequal and precarious: when he punishes, it

is by abandoning the tribe to the vengeance of some neighbouring and

rival clan. Such a state of things seems to be as befitting for the

exercise of his talents, as his talents for adjusting them to his own

satisfaction.

Morocco is isolated from the world: on the west an unapproachable

coast; on the east and south an impassable desert. It has no

neighbours except the Regency of Algiers. Its standing policy was to

be _at war_ with Europe. Muley Ismael, visiting Tetuan, addressed the

body of council who had come to compliment him, in these words, “It

is my pleasure to be at war with all Christendom, except England and

Raguza.” Yet they made treaties with the merchants of the states with

which they were not figuratively, but really at war. M. Chenier, who

was French consul fifty years ago at Tangier, has written the best

work upon Morocco. He confined its foreign relations to Algiers; it

is with reference to that Regency, that he calculated its military

force. He esteems Morocco the weaker of the two, and in danger from

Algiers. The Turks had invaded Morocco from Algiers, and they once

placed a sovereign on the throne of Fez, but that was long ago.

Foreign relations had been to them a novelty, which they ought not to

be, seeing that the princes of this land formerly assumed the lofty

title of Emir al Moslemin; that they have never ceased to claim the

chieftainship of the Arab race, and have never condescended to sign

a treaty with the Sultans of Constantinople. Holding the Turks as

usurpers of the Caliphat, and intruders in Africa,[226] they stand in

an anomalous position: they are Sunis who opposed the claims of Ali,

and their royal house derives, or pretends to derive, its origin from

Ali. Muley Abderachman has, however, shown no sign, in dealing with

the foreign difficulties that have befallen him, of that dexterity

which he has evinced in domestic matters. In listening to the details

of his weakness and pusillanimity, as shown on recent occasions, I have

been reminded of Louis Philippe.[227]

The feature in the administration of this country, or rather reign, is

the private dealing of the Emperor with the merchants. He remits to

them duties, and makes loans of money without interest. He allows them

to export and import without paying the duties in ready money,[228]

and they go on in the face of an accumulating debt, speculating on

credit. The goods are bought and sold at what would be a loss, if the

taxes were accounted for; and when any one of them is unable to meet

his engagements, he has only to go to the Emperor and borrow, and

thus again heap up the mass of engagements, he never can meet. He is

encouraged by the knowledge, that the Emperor never calls a creditor

to account;--the settlement comes only on his dying day. It is not

trifling sums that are at stake. The debt of the English agent at

Mogadore, is between forty and fifty thousand pounds.

These concessions of credit, the loans of money and the granting of

permits, and monopolies, are managed, not with a view to the pecuniary

interests of the sovereign, but for political ends. By these means

he paralyzes all resistance to his illegal taxes on trade in the

cities whose business these imposts are considered to be. This ledger

management of a nation is an effort of genius worthy of Mehemet Ali.

The _fons malorum_, here as elsewhere, is the customs duties. They have

everywhere been introduced by evasion and fraud; for, until a people

is familiarised with them, they are too monstrous and wicked to be

argued about. In Mussulman countries the task has been more difficult

than with us, as there is no church property with which to bribe public

assemblies, and taxes on commerce are expressly prohibited by the

code at once of religion and government. A people so tenacious of old

customs as the Moors, and so little disposed to imitate Europe, were

not easily brought under on such a point, and their recent history

affords two instances of revolts occasioned by illegal taxation. The

first revolt was in 1774, when the principal citizens of Fez (an

unprotected city) thus addressed the Sultan, Sidi Mahomet:--

“The city of Fez means not to disobey, nor ever could so mean; but the

taxes laid on provisions, and the increase of duty on merchants, and

which the Mussulmans” (the term is analogous to “the country” with us)

“regard as contrary to custom and religion, were considerations that to

so great and so religious a prince might excuse the general murmur and

discontent.”

No punishments followed the suppression of this rebellion, and the

taxes were abandoned. “Snuff was farmed, and an _octroi_ placed on

commodities per load, as they enter and go out of towns, or pass

ferries; a stamp was put on woollen stuffs, and on all the trinkets

made by goldsmiths. The governors of the towns farm these taxes at a

fixed sum, by which they very seldom are gainers. These new imposts are

considered among the Moors as innovations, contrary to the spirit of

the Koran. These taxes produced a revolt at Mequinez in 1778, but it

was put down by the black guard of the Emperor.”

Chenier, whom I quote, distinguishes the revenues into ancient and

modern, the ancient being the tenths, the capitation tax (tribute) of

the Jews, the profits of coining, arbitrary impositions; the modern

being the obnoxious duties and _octroi_. He highly commends the

ancient system: the tithes he considers profitable to the Government,

and not onerous to the people (of course, he is mentally instituting

the comparison with Europe, because paid in kind.) “He who grows ten

bushels of corn pays one, without any retrospect or inquiry concerning

a more abundant harvest, which presents an example of justice among

barbarous states well worthy the imitation of the more civilized.”

The collection was easy, because, being united in bodies, they watched

each other, and prevented fraud. Being paid in kind, the Sultan had

magazines in the great provincial towns to store these revenues, and

sent to market the residue, after maintaining his palaces, soldiers,

and dependants; consequently, there were no currency troubles. The

present Sultan, by making the merchants his debtors, has converted

the guardians of common rights into his satellites; and finding his

account in remitting the payment of the customs, and allowing himself

to be defrauded of what we should esteem a legitimate revenue, he

has so far succeeded. Customs are looked upon as the affairs of the

merchants, and the merchants are all foreigners and infidels. Taxes

are then arbitrarily imposed on trade--monopolies are granted, and the

whole production of the country is paralysed and subjected to a foreign

influence, which they cannot indeed unravel, but against which there is

a deep and universal sense of reprobation. It is not from Europe that

they will learn the secret of the ancient well-being of so many states

and empires, which were great without parliamentary votes and political

economists.

FOOTNOTES:

[226] At the time of the treaty of Kaniordgi the Moorish Sultan,

however, addressed Louis XIV. on the danger to Europe of so powerful a

combination directed against Turkey.

[227] In the terrors and alarms which followed the treaty of July

1840, one of his ministers thus describes the scene at the council:

“Nous étions dix, et nous n’en savons pas plus l’un que l’autre,

et il y avoit le roi, qui n’en savoit pas plus que nous, et _qui

sang-lottait_.” (The above was written while Louis Philippe was still

held to be the “ablest man in France,” and the “wiliest politician in

Europe.”)

[228] Those who pay ready money have 25 per cent. discount allowed

them. This is not the form, but the substance of the tariff

regulations.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN RABAT.

The civil government of Rabat is vested in the Caïd, whose functions

I have already described. The financial officers are the _Emirs_ of

the custom-house, the chief of whom is called the _Administrador_, and

which, from that title, seems to have supplanted the original municipal

Government; the _Mehatzib_, an officer appointed to fix the price of

provisions, and to stamp goods publicly sold; and the _Nadir_, or

administrator of the Sultan’s property, which consists in the houses

and gardens he comes into possession of on the demise of his debtors,

by which means he has extinguished in part, and is in process of

extinguishing, the ancient rights and privileges of the town. There is

no confiscation in Rabat for any crime; but by the custom-house system

he is becoming the proprietor of all the property. The Nadir has from

these funds to pay the poor _Talebs_, or learned men, which absorbs

a great portion of the profits. There is a _Beit ul Mal_, or public

treasury. The judicial power belongs of right to the Caïd, or to him

who is next in dignity to the Caïd. The office is well known in Turkey,

but here he belongs to no independent body, and exercises but slender

influence: it has not, however, been always so. Mr. Addison, a chaplain

of Charles II., and some time at Tangier during the English occupation,

thus speaks of what he calls “The Moors’ Church Government.”

“They have in every cavila (or county) an Alcalib or high-priest, in

whose nomination the secular power doth not at all interpose, for

he is chosen out of and by the Alfaques, and invested with power to

depose or otherwise chastise the offending clergy. Immediately upon

this arch-priest’s election, he is possessed of the Giamma Gheber,

or Great Church, wherein upon every Friday he expounds some text of

the Alchoran, unto which exercise he always goes accompanied with the

chief personages of the neighbourhood. This eminent churchman is seldom

seen in public but at this exercise. For, to make himself the more

reverenced, he affects retirement,[229] spending his hours in the study

of the Alchoran, and in resolving such cases as the laity present him,

who esteem his resolutions as infallible; and this, with a careful

inspection into the deportment of the inferior clergy, doth constitute

the office and government of the Alcalib. As for his revenues, they

are suitable to his condition; and as to his life, it is austere and

reserved, he affecting a peculiar gravity in all his carriage. Every

Alcalib has his distinct diocese, out of which he has no power, so that

the Alcalib of Beni Aros hath nothing to do in Minkél, for every one is

absolute in his own cavila.”

Mr. Addison gives the following interesting details respecting their

judicial proceedings:--

“Here’s no intriguing the plea with resolutions, cases, precedents,

reports, moth-eaten statutes, &c.; but everything is determined

according to the fresh circumstances of the fact, and the proof of

which is alleged. The testimony of two men, if they are of known

sobriety, is sufficient to make good the allegation, but there must be

_twelve_ to ratify it, if their conversation be suspected.

“In taking the testimony of a Moor upon oath, the servant of the

Alcaldee carries the deponent to the Giamma or Mosch, where, in the

presence of the Alcaldee, he swears by that holy place that he will

declare all that he knows concerning the matter to which he is to give

evidence; but oaths are never administered to any in another man’s case

but such as are suspected persons, and they are usually numbered among

the rogues and faithless, who have no credit without them. Besides, it

is never permitted for a man to swear in his own case but for want of

witnesses, or when the accusation is of that nature that the impeached

cannot otherwise receive purgation: as for the Christian and Jew, they

are suffered to give testimony according to the rites and customs of

their own religions, but the Moors are not forward to put them upon

this trial, as doubting that fear of punishment should tempt them

to perjury; and those who are thereunto accessory (according to the

Moresco principle), are involved in the guilt.

“In pleas of debt it is required that the reality of the debt be

first manifest, which being done before the Alcaldee, he signifies

it to the Almocadem of the cavila where the debtor lives, who, upon

his signification, commands a present payment to be made; but if the

debtor refuse, or be unable, to give the creditor satisfaction, the

Almocadem remits him to the alhabs or prison, which is always near the

Almocadem’s house, where he stays till bailed thence by sufficient

sureties, or personally pays the debt.”

The following on the same subject is from the ponderous records of the

Franciscan Friars:--

“It is customary for all the chief priests and doctors of law to

assemble with the other great people of the town, and for the Mufti or

Cadi to read aloud to the Emperor a short recapitulation of some of

the laws of the Koran, which direct that he shall preserve the empire,

administer speedy justice, protect the innocent, destroy the wicked;

and so far from countenancing and keeping near his sacred person any

adulterer, that he shall punish adultery, prevent the exportation of

corn and provisions to the prejudice of the people, tax provisions

according to their plenty or scarcity, and forbid usury to be exercised

towards the poor, which is an abomination before God. He is told that

if he breaks these articles, he shall be punished as he ought to

punish others.”

These extracts will show that Morocco is not now without some rule for

the present, and some respectable vestiges of the past. There are other

functionaries of the city, whose origin ascends to an earlier period

than the Mussulman times. They are public notaries, called Edules;

no doubt the Roman edile. Before them sales are effected, and deeds

executed.

The present practice I shall give as I have been able to collect it.

The initiatory steps are by documents drawn up by _Edules_--these have

the conjoint characters of petition, affidavit, and verdict (in the

old sense). The Plaintiff’s case is stated--he signs it. His witnesses

then sign, if they agree with his statement of facts, or state in what

they differ. Then follow signatures as vouching for the Plaintiff or

Defendant, as the case may be, the witnesses, or the other signees.

This act is then verified by the Edules, as to the genuineness of the

signatures. Furnished with this document, the petitioner proceeds

to the judge, the governor, or the Sultan. He is met by a counter

document. The Judge, after perusing these, proceeds to try the case

by oral testimony, and without intervention of legal practitioners.

The document is called _El Bra_, which is very near, _Brief_.[230]

This is evidently the origin of the Spanish mode of procedure by

_Escribanos_. Among the Spaniards the oral proceedings are suppressed,

and those which are the preliminary steps only in the Moorish courts,

constitute the whole proceeding. The Edules have become agents to the

parties, as well as public notaries; so that the case of each party is

placed in the hands of the agents of the other. Thus, notwithstanding

excellent laws, the Spanish Courts have been converted into labyrinths

of intrigue. The Moorish system, which exhibits the origin of the

Spanish aberrations, still retains the celerity of oral proceedings,

with the advantage of record, and combines the responsibility of a

Judge with the uses of a Jury. In fact, it differs little from the

ancient institution of the Jury in Britain, which gave their verdict

on the common repute of the parties, and not on the facts of the case;

though it does not leave to them the faculty either of condemnation

or expurgation. I look, of course, to the system, as what it would be

if duly executed; and it was, no doubt, the foundation of that prompt

justice which characterised the Mussulman government in Spain, and made

Algiers a model for quick, _gratuitous_, and impartial adjudication,

until its capture by the French.

When any one is assaulted or insulted in the streets, or in any way

injured in public, and he appeals to the Caïd: his appeal is rejected

unless he brings as witnesses those who were present; but he has the

power of compelling their presence--he has but to cry out, “I seek

justice,” and every one within hearing must quit whatever occupation

they are engaged in, and secure the offender. If they refuse or

neglect, they become immediately principals, and the injured person has

his remedy against each and all.

It is to this rule--an extended “view of frank pledge,”[231]--that

the tranquillity and security of the towns amongst so turbulent a

population is to be attributed; and whatever partiality there may be in

governors, there is no apprehension of false testimony among the people.

The office of king, in Morocco, is specially that of Grand Justiciary.

The king himself is the fountain of justice. There is the utmost

freedom of appeal to him from or against the Caïd;--he will stop in the

streets, and administer summary justice while sitting on horseback; and

when any supplicant appears at his gate, however humble, of whatever

race or faith, and pronounces the words, “The God of Justice,” he is

admitted to his presence; the order is given for the council to be

filled; the secretaries appear in their places, and the petitioner

states his or her case, and justice is immediately done. While he has

been here, two hours have been daily consecrated to this duty; and

this I imagine to be the secret of those constant peregrinations of

the Emperor of Morocco, and their extraordinary effect in quelling

insurrections and quieting the country; whilst, by the heavy exactions

with which they are accompanied, they might appear calculated to

produce the very contrary effect. A “progress of the king,” is

the constant specific in Morocco for disturbance--there is always

disturbance where he has not for a long time appeared; and he always

manages to subdue it.

The designation of the court of Morocco is El Haznee, or the treasury.

The title of the Minister of Finance in Spain to day is Haciendu.

Haznee is treasury or possessions--the two terms are synonymous, and

one is derived from the other: the one briefly explains in Morocco

the purposes of government, and in Spain its necessities. Our word

magazine comes from Mal Haznee, or treasury of wealth. How surprised

the legitimate owners of the terms would be, if they knew the contents

of the periodicals to which we apply it.

It is impossible to conclude this subject of government without mention

of the saints. What constitutes a saint no one can tell: they are of

both sexes and all ages, of every class and rank, from the madman

to the philosopher, from the fanatic to the infidel, and from the

mischievous and wicked to the humane and benevolent. I met a man with

wool on his head, and a long stave in his hand, chanting forth a ditty

at the top of his strained voice. This was a saint, and the soldiers

made me move aside, for fear he should make a rush at me. They took the

man for a madman; he was none. There was some time ago at Tangier, a

female saint, who went about entirely naked: every morning she took

from the market-people wood, and laying it in a circle made a fire and

seated herself in the middle. There are respectable families where

saintship is hereditary: these bury the saints when they die, in their

own houses. In these saints are to be found traces at once of the

asceticism of early Christianity, which had its birth in Africa, and

of those practices which, in the still earlier times of Polytheism,

rendered Africa a scandal and wonder to the rest of the world.[232]

Since the introduction of Islamism, the superstitions of a country,

in early times the most fertile in monsters and chimeras, have been

associated with that faith, and have produced that strange veneration

of dead saints and sanctification of living fools, which is without

parallel elsewhere; and weaving themselves into the religious forms of

a people whose civil government is derived from its sacred writings,

the distinction between the doctrines of the one, and revolutions

of the other is effaced, and thus do we find the names of dynasties

derived from the denomination of sects.

All the great dynasties, save one, have begun with saints or preachers.

Fez and Morocco were built by followers of teachers who settled

around their cells to listen to their words, and share in the repose

that resulted, if not from the justice they administered, at least

from the respect which they inspired. They died, as they had lived,

teachers and preachers. On the son of the one--on the posthumous child

of the other--the surviving gratitude of the people bestowed the

title and authority of prince. The title of the present emperor is

merely the designation of an officer of the law. That character alone

should give to a man control over the multitude and authority over the

monarch--make his house a sanctuary for the malefactor, and himself a

guarantee of safety to a caravan, is a wonderful thing. Their religious

establishment has served to repair wrongs and to avert calamities, and

even at the present moment it mitigates rudeness and restrains power.

One of the tribes of necromancers seems to possess some secret which

protects them against the bite of the most venomous serpent.[233]

An exhibition of this kind I have failed to see, this not being the

season of the year. They attribute diseases to the presence of evil

spirits--they fear the evil eye, and against these the remedy is

writing on pieces of paper and amulets, a practice derived from or

connected with the writing by the Jews of portions of Scripture on

paper, binding it on the foreheads and arms, and inserting them in

holes in the door-posts. Anybody performs this service of writing on

pieces of paper, and in the Dunus when I have refused to prescribe,

or had nothing to give, the patient has been taken to the Scheik,

who immediately furnished at once a prescription and dose with his

reed. The learned in the art are from Suz--they are called _Tolmas_,

and walk in secret, making an equal mystery of themselves and their

necromancies; poor and wandering, and refusing remuneration. They

generally exact a promise of secrecy before they exert their art.

By the account which I have heard, it is with them also the pen and

scraps of paper, but their mode of using them is different. As they

write they throw their prescriptions into a brazier, and go on thus

increasing the power of the incantation--but into the brazier is

first thrown incense. In the shops, incense, or plants, or leaves

producing sweet odours, occupy a considerable amount of space. The

Pharmacopolists exceed all conceivable proportion. The operation of

their drugs upon the human body appears chiefly to be through the nose,

and by means of the chafing-dish. The plants and gums are supposed to

possess distinct qualities and virtues. Thus, in ancient Polytheism,

different incense was offered to different divinities. Vervain had

magical power for Greeks, Romans, and Druids; it has so still for

cats. A plant is particularly mentioned--_Cynospastes_,[234]--by the

smoke of which epilepsy was cured, and demons were expelled. The plant

_Barras_, was similarly used by the Hebrews.[235] It is supposed, to

be one of the Algæ, which contains prussic acid. Amongst the Jews,

death was the penalty for compounding the incense that was used in the

Temple. In the story of Balaam, we find incantations mixed with the

worship of Jehovah.

The Tolmas are applied to in cases of disease; for the recovery of

stolen goods; that they “may not be seen when burying their money;

for gaining the affection of individuals, but chiefly for casting out

devils.” The consulting party states his case; the Tolman writes, and

throws the paper in the fire, and after a time tells him that the

disorder will or will not be cured, and in what time and manner, or

what he is to do--that the stolen property has been taken by a certain

individual, or by a man of such a form and appearance--that at a

certain time he will be moved by remorse to restore it--that in such a

day or place he will be found selling it, &c. Stories of the casting

out of devils take the place of our ghost stories;--I will give one as

a specimen.

A party of Jews were amusing themselves in a garden near Tangier; one

of them, a butcher, fell into a pond. When he was drawn out, he was

in violent contortions--he had been seized by a spirit. A Tolma was

sent for. Having cut a reed of the length a man could hold between the

palms of his hands with his arms stretched out, he made it to be so

held by one of the party; then addressing the devil, asked who he was.

The devil, speaking by the mouth of the man in convulsions, answered,

that he would tell him neither his name, nor that of his tribe, nor

that of his father, nor that of his mother, but only that he was a Jew.

The Tolma asked, why he had entered into this man? The devil answered,

that he was at the bottom of the lake with his wife and children, and

that the butcher had fallen in and killed one of his sons; and that

now he would not leave him until he had taken his life. While this

conversation was going on, the reed was shortened in the hands of the

man who held it, and the Tolma declared that power was given to the

spirit over the man. Incantations were vain, but he continued to write

on paper, and to throw the scraps into the brazier; and as he did so,

the reed shortened and shortened, and the man’s frenzy became wilder,

and then his strength decayed, and suddenly the hands of the man who

held the reed closed together, and, at the same moment, the possessed

expired.

When the incantation is powerful enough to subdue the spirit, he

implores liberty to be released, and to go into some other body, and

then the enchanter will not suffer him until he has bound himself by

an oath never to enter the same man again, nor to come near a certain

place, and then asks him whether he chooses to go out by fire or water.

A basin of the one and the other is accordingly brought, into one of

which the spirit is supposed to plunge, and then the patient speaks in

his own voice, and recovers as if from a trance.

The chaplain of Tangier, while it was held by the English, gives us the

following narrative:--

“One of my soldiers, an Issówi, was seized with the devil: it took four

men to hold him down, and prevent him jumping over the battlements.

He then broke away from us, and throwing himself on the ground began

tearing himself: I never saw anything so explanatory of the account

in Scripture. The cure is as curious as the disease. They burn some

benzoin under the nose of the patient, which quiets him for a time;

but as soon as the fumes cease, he breaks out again, and lays hold

of everything within his reach: in some cases he has been known to

destroy children. This poor creature ate several pieces of paper, and

bits of lime and dirt; but when the words ‘Sídí Benel Abbás, Sídí

Abd-el-Kádir,’ &c., were pronounced, his hands, which had been firmly

closed, were opened: his companions then called upon Abú to say the

Fátihah, in which all joined, when he came to himself, although he

appeared, and talked, like a child for some minutes; after which he

quite recovered.”

FOOTNOTES:

[229] El que hoy vive en Tetuan es un hombre en el exterior

modestissimo, muy mortificado en los ojos; humilde en las palabras,

curitativo con los pobres y nunca permiti a sus manos el contacto

physico de el dinero.--MESCON, _Historial de Marrueccos_, l. i. p. 25.

[230] No word has given rise to wilder speculation than _Carta_, paper.

The word here is _caret_.

[231] At Mequinez, a man having found something in the streets, caused

it to be proclaimed, in order that the owner might come and receive

his property. Muley Ismael sent for him, and thus addressed him. “You

do not deserve death, for you are not a robber; but as I wish all my

subjects to know that the proper way to have things returned to their

rightful owners is by leaving them where they are, I must make an

example of you.”

[232] I refer to the orgies practised among the polished Carthaginians,

and better known as belonging to the worship of the Cyprian Venus, and

which are reported by credible witnesses as of public occurrence at no

remote period in Barbary, on the part alike of male and female saints.

[233] These are the Psylli of the ancients. The same gift was enjoyed

by the Marses in Italy, and the Opheogines in Cyprus possessed it; the

former pretended to derive it from the enchantress Circe, the latter

from a virgin of Phrygia united to a Sacred Dragon.--See A. Gell. Noct.

Attic., l. ix. c. 13, et l. xvi. c. 2. Strabo, l. xiii.; Ælian De Nat.

Animal, l. i. c. 57, et l. xii. c. 39.

[234] Ælian de Nat. Animal, l. iv. c. 27. It was also called

Aglaophotis, and has a flame-coloured flower, supposed at night to emit

flashes. It is the Atropa Belladonna.

[235] Josephus, De Bello Jud. l. vii. c. 25.

CHAPTER VII.

CONNEXION BETWEEN MAURITANIA AND AMERICA.

Rabat, Dec. 17th.

The thermometer, in a room where the sun never shines, stands nearly

at temperate. During twenty days, we have only had two days of bad

weather: it is hot in the sun, and cold at night. The days and nights

are of resplendent beauty, with almost always a cloudless sky towards

evening. The landscape up the river has a delicacy of colouring as

peculiar as beautiful. At night the moon is so brilliant, that stars

only of the third magnitude are visible. Walking on the top of the

house, for here one leads a cat-like life--always on the roof--it is

like a mixture of summer and winter. The houses around seem in their

whiteness as if under a load of snow; above, there is a summer sky,

and around, verdant hills and fields. I gathered in a garden a branch

of a pear-tree in full blossom, though the rest of the tree was quite

dead; and flocks of swallows were disporting in the air, making, by our

proverb, a summer of December. Yet, during this time, there have been

disasters upon the coast: the schooner with which we were in company

has been entirely lost at Dar-el-Baída.[236]

A French steam-vessel of war has also been lost, and eighty men have

perished: this is the second.

The representative of Muley Idris has been here several times: the last

time he came alone, and said his servants and baggage were waiting

for him at Salee, where he was going to join them, but that he had

come first to bid me “good-bye.” I offered him a trifling present--a

microscope; he said he could neither eat it nor wear it, and rejected

it with disdain. I said I had nothing less unworthy of his acceptance;

on which he said, “Then, give me money.” I was aware that saints cannot

ask for coin. He next cast his eyes round the room, and said, “I will

take away with me that loaf of sugar.” I intimated to him that he

should do nothing of the sort: he instantly dropped the saint and the

madman, and we parted in the civilest manner.

I was consulted as to sending some children to be educated at Paris:

it was some time before I could believe they were in earnest. On

my dissuading them, I was answered, “We want physicians, chemists,

astronomers, mechanics, miners, makers of arms, and instructed men. We

had all these formerly, and gave these sciences to Europe: why should

we not take them back again?” I endeavoured to represent to them the

distinction between science and the manners of the people who might,

in any particular age, be scientific; that, if they could take the

science of Europe naked, and without the plague-garments in which it

was at present dressed, viz. our ideas, morals, and manners, it would

be well. But they were not men to discriminate, and, certainly, it was

not by children that the separation could be effected. They told me

that the Moorish envoy, who was recently at Paris, had seen an Algerine

boy highly commended by his French instructors, who, nevertheless,

nourished in his heart almost a detestation of the French; and said

that he was striving to acquire the knowledge they possessed to be able

to drive them out of Africa. I pointed out the difference between a

captive taken in war and children voluntarily sent for instruction, who

could not come back to their primitive life but to look with contempt

on their fathers.

Some remarks ensued, which showed that I was suspected of jealousy of

France, so I had to argue the point. I told them, that if I coveted

their land for a country, I should be glad to see France there, or even

conquering it, for it would fall out as in India and America. France

doing everything _by her Government_, as they said in Algiers, she

always had awakened and ever must arouse such an amount of animosity

against her, as to render untenable every conquest effected by her

arms. In India, France had opened the way; had established a system of

native government, and created the whole of those implements through

which we obtained possession of India, and at this moment retain

it. The English Government itself had nothing to do with India. A

company of merchants managed it, and thereby succeeded the French.

In America, the same thing had happened twice over. We had lost our

colonies, which France could not take, and got hers, which she could

not keep. The New World presented the great warnings, which I turned to

account, instancing the numerous population, the magnificent cities,

the industrious and polished races, the highly cultivated lands, the

works of irrigation, and, in some cases, the admirable laws which

existed until the European came with his light, and science, and

philanthropy--and decay followed his steps: his rule was a curse, and

race after race has been exterminated.

To primitive races, national genealogy is above all things attractive;

and the question was raised as to the possible blood relationship

between themselves and the Mexicans, through the Phœnicians. I will not

rehearse the conversation, but cannot at once dismiss the subject.

That Western world may have had its beginning, its progress, its

multifarious phases, its great existencies, its long life, and its

decay in the same way that we have had ours, without there being a

necessary connexion, although there be infinite points of resemblance

with the numerous forms and accidents of Egypt and Etruria, of India

and Chaldea. Still, the objection to intercourse, on the score of

insuperable obstacles in the navigation of the oceans on either

side, appears to me to be, in a philosophic age, the most strange of

hallucinations. Every dot upon the surface of the water has been found

occupied by the human race, and there have been indubitable crossings,

both of the Pacific and Atlantic, by large vessels and junks, and by

small boats and canoes. The tradition of the Atlantic Islands seems

an indubitable, though indistinct trace, amongst the Greeks, of a

Phœnician discovery. If, as I believe, I have almost succeeded in

showing the magnetic needle was possessed by that people, the obstacles

to the crossing the Atlantic, and to continuous intercourse, are still

further removed. It was not, however, until I entered the room which

I here occupy, that I perceived direct proof of this connexion. There

hangs up an ornamented Table of the Law, such as is common in the

houses of the Jews--that mysterious open hand on the one side; on the

other, a diagram, which occupies a prominent place in the symbols of

Masonry, the double triangle. It is also a cabalistic and astrological

figure. It forms five points, and is, I believe (not the six-pointed

one), the proper “Solomon’s seal.” They could give no explanation of

its meaning or origin, and only said, “It has been always so.” I find

this same sign is on the signet of the Sultan, and on his coin. The

Moors have adopted it as their arms. They, no more than the Jews, can

tell what it means. It is lost in the mists of their common antiquity.

The very same symbol is found in Mexico.

Roads, worthy of being compared to, and alone rivalling (by the

confession of Humboldt) those of the Romans; pottery, equalling, and

resembling, that of the Etruscans; resemblances of costume, as with the

head-dress of the Etruscans; instruments of music, the double flute of

the Curians--do not go so far to indicate a connexion, as the adoption

of a symbol such as this; but when you have an exact correspondence

in a peculiar and arbitrary figure, then other resemblances may be

admitted, as furnishing corroborative proof of a common matrix, if not

for the races, at least for their arts.

There are, however, other resemblances, which it would require a

vigorous imagination to explain by the doctrine of coincidence.

Gladiators contending with the Retiarius, derived by the Latins from

the Etruscans;--tombs, like the Etruscan, constructed of enormous heaps

of earth, upon a basement of masonry; mortar, that most remarkable

discovery of the Phœnicians; tapia, or the mixture of mortar and

clay;--papyrus, prepared crosswise, like that of Egypt; and tesselated

pavements. Again, the Mexican year, coinciding with the Etruscan, the

Mexican being three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours, and fifty

minutes; the Etruscan, three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours,

and forty minutes. There are traces of unknown characters reported,

so that some people who used letters must have set foot upon that

continent. The buildings are almost all turned to the cardinal points.

Mention, in two instances, is made of glass and of enamel.

The Mexicans had baths. However magnificent their public monuments,

these were not on that scale which corresponded with the Roman and the

Greek Thermæ, but such as are found in almost every house in Morocco--a

small apartment, seven feet square, with a cupola roof, five to six

feet, and a slightly convex floor, under one side of which there is a

fire, and a small, low door to creep in by.

If Phœnicians found their way across the Atlantic, they would have

taught, amongst the first things, the bath and the points of the

compass, trinkets of glass, the art of dyeing, &c.; and these things

are there, with that peculiar mark and stamp of the people who have

specially preserved the usages of the ancient world. Putting together

these things, with the fact that the Phœnicians were the navigators

exclusively to the West and to the East, I cannot help looking upon

America as within the range of their enterprise, and many of its works

as the record of their passage.

Dec. 18th.

In this country, as I should think must happen in China, the attention

is fixed on the most trivial things; or, rather, the importance

appears of things held to be trivial. One feels in contact with the

world in its infancy; as if, by stretching forth the hand, you could

reach the source of the earliest inventions for supplying our wants,

or gratifying our desires. I can only compare it to a museum of

antiquities, whether in what they wear; what they do; the houses they

inhabit; the names they bear; or the words they speak;--all is as it

was of old. Here, too, are the rudiments of what we find in other forms

elsewhere. What can be more striking than to be called, as I was myself

to-day, a Nazarene! the first title applied to the Apostles by the Jews.

By the exclusion of atmospheric air, the most delicate flower may be

handed down to future ages. Here a similar process seems to have been

applied to man: the cause of change is excluded in the one case--change

itself in the other: elsewhere, letters graven upon brass and marble,

are our guides through the evolution of ages; but here man himself is

the undying and unchangeable record of himself.

This morning I was watching a Negress who rejoiced in the Punic name of

Barca, washing and cooking in the court below. Her extreme and minute

cleanliness suggested the question: “In what could cleanliness have

consisted before the discovery of soap?” Soap comes next to absolute

necessaries. What must have been the condition of nations without

either soap or the bath? What a benefit to the human race the discovery

of either;--where neither was known, filth would be as habitual as

clothing: there could be nothing clean or unclean. The use of the bath

must then have made that difference between one people and another,

that exists between filthy and cleanly animals, altering their very

nature. Yet I could not tell when it was discovered, or who were the

inventors. Why should it alone be without honour, or parentage?

Whence its name?[237] Our word is from the Latin, but soap has no

Latin etymon. The name is not derived from the Greek; it has, in that

language, no corresponding term. The modern Greeks use the same--either

their soap has travelled eastward since the decline of the Roman

Empire, or it belongs to the East at an earlier time. In this dilemma

I apply to Barca, and at once obtain the solution. Soap, in Arabic, is

_Saboon_. They have the verb, _Sabeïn_, which does not mean to ‘soap,’

but, to ‘wash.’ The Arabs did not adopt the name from Rome, and coin

out of it a verb for so primitive a usage as washing.

The Moors possessed soap made to their hands, measured by mountains,

and cheaper than manure. This substance is decomposed flints, or

soap-stone: it is called Gazule, or Razule; it polishes the skin, makes

it soft, and gives it lustre. It abounds on the river Seboo, and may,

when exported, have got that name abroad. It is not fit for washing

clothes, for which purpose they have a primitive soft soap like that

of the ancient Celts--this is what they call Saboun. The first mention

made of it is amongst the Gauls. The Romans had so little acquaintance

with it in Pliny’s time, that he thought it was used for the purpose

of turning the hair red. It is no trifling honour to the Gaulish race,

looked upon as barbarous, that the Romans should have taken from them

beds and mattresses, jewellery, and soap. “Soap,” says Pliny, “is an

invention of the Gauls to colour the head yellow: it is made of tallow

and ashes. The best which they make is of beech wood ashes and goat’s

suet, and it is made in two ways, either thick and hard, or liquid and

soft; but the one, as well as the other, is very much used in Germany;

and a great deal more indeed by men than women.”[238]

Great ingenuity was exerted in discovering and applying various kinds

of earths and solvents to clean the body and the clothes, as may

be followed at length in Pliny; but yet the best mixture at which

they seem to have arrived, is that which was used in Greece, of

which the preparation is described by Aristophanes in the Frogs--a

composition[239] of ashes, nitre and crinoline earth. The Romans, like

the French at present, _lessieved_ their dirty linen.[240]

FOOTNOTES:

[236] Another vessel was also off the port twice, and twice driven back

to Gibraltar.

[237] Beckman derives it from an old German word _sepe_. The German

word is at present _seife_, evidently the same as the French _suif_,

and the English _suet_.

[238] Nat. Hist. b. 28.

[239] Bochart imagines that the Phœnicians had given the name to

the island, Gum-ohal, signifying “fossa smegmatis.” It was found in

Thessaly, Lycia, Sardis and Umbria. Avicenna calls it Al Siraph, from

a town on the Persian gulf. Dioscorides says, gall prepared with nitre

and earth of Cineola, is the best detergent. The ancients knew the

saponaceous root with which in India shawls and muslins are washed,

and which the Persians, Turks, and Arabs, use for the hair, and

otherwise where great delicacy is required. It was from a Persian word

called _Asleg_, by the Arabs _Condus_, by the Greeks στρούθιον, whence

στρουθιζειν. Pliny calls it (Nat. His. l. xix. c. 3), “radiculam et

herbam lanariam.” The detersives used by the ancients were various,

but were nearly the same as those in present use among the Mahometans.

They were called by the general name of _smegmata_. A common detersive

was bean meal, which the Romans called _lomentum_, and a paste from

lupine flour. Galen (De Aliment. Facul. i.) says, “Cutis sordes fabacea

farina manifestè deterget,” (bean flour certainly takes off filth from

the skin), on which account procuresses and dainty women anciently made

great use of it: they smeared it on the face, and it was said to remove

freckles and pimples. Dioscorides goes so far as to assert that it

will render cicatrices of a uniform colour with the rest of the skin.

It stops the blackness arising from blows. Lomentum will take away

wrinkles, if we are to believe Martial (l. iv.)

Lumento rugas ventris quod condere tentas.

Pliny says (l. xxviii. c. 25), that lupine flour made into a paste with

vinegar, will, if smeared on in the bath, remove pimples and itching,

and dry up running sores; that a decoction of lupines will cure

freckles and brace the skin.

[240] Pliny, xxviii. 51.

CHAPTER VIII.

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOORS.

The domestic arrangements differ here from other Mussulman countries.

The house is not divided into _Harem_ and _Salambu_. In fact, there

is no harem, for there are neither its rights nor privileges: the

separation of the women, which in Arabia could not be extended to the

habitation, adapted itself to the gynæceum of the houses among the

Greeks, and the Zanana of the followers of Zoroaster. In Morocco, there

having been no such anterior practice, the injunction has had no effect

on those who live under the tent, and has converted the domiciles of

the inhabitants of the cities into inhospitable abodes. I went to-day

to Mike Brettel’s, on invitation, expressly for the purpose of seeing

his house, which is just finished. I can see nothing more remarkable at

Fez or Morocco, so I shall endeavour to describe it.

We approached by a narrow lane of blind walls about twelve feet high.

The door was in the corner, the arch above it, and the lintels were

painted in broad bars, and stripes of deep colours like an Egyptian

tomb: there was a knocker--nay, two--one for the folding doors, and

another for the wicket; the upper one might have been made in London.

We knocked: the knock is neither a single tap, nor a postman’s double

rap, but a double knock, though neither quite so loud or long as those

with which the squares of London were wont to resound. The door not

being immediately opened, we heard within a bell rung sharply, (in

Eastern countries the bell is unknown), and the door was opened by a

young girl, a slave, small, yet apparently full grown. She wore a

tunic of blue and white, striped, which left her neck, arms, and half

her legs bare. Her colour was chocolate, her features perfect, her form

a model. Her sparkling eyes and white teeth announced that the visit

was expected; and, waving her hands as a signal to follow, she tripped

up a narrow staircase by the door. The steps and passages were inlaid

with hexagonal red tiles and small triangles of green tiles: there was

no flooring about the house richer than this, which is very modest:

the houses and courtyard of the Jews are in Mosaic. At the top of the

stairs we found ourselves in a small vestibule, the light let in from

above, through the ornamented portions of the ceiling. Everything was

in proportion: all palace-like, but microscopic;--I might have taken

it for the abode of the pigmies of Herodotus, had my guide not rather

suggested fairies or sylphs.

The vestibule led to an apartment, where the master of the house was

seated in the middle of the floor with a tea-tray before him. Seeing

me busied in taking off my shoes, he came forward entreating me to

enter with them on; for it is common to imagine that Europeans make it

a point of honour to disregard the feelings of their Eastern hosts,

and to soil their carpets. This room was the gem of the house, but it

was some time before I could venture to examine it, being shamed by

the officious zeal of the Jews who accompanied me, and who began at

once to point out this and that, as if we had entered a shop,--I mean a

European one,--for in an Oriental shop the decencies are not neglected.

Mike Brettel commenced making tea;--they use fine green tea--they put

it into the pot with sundry sweet herbs and large lumps of sugar. The

teapot was Britannia metal, the cups and saucers the small delicate

Chinese. The tray was of a manufacture for which Rabat is celebrated.

It is brass chased in arabesques and inlaid in colours. At Mecca they

work in the same way. He _rang the bell_ for hot water and sugar, which

were brought, the one by the olive maiden already mentioned, the other

by one whom I might have taken for her, had her tunic not been white

and red. The hot water was brought in a common tin kettle, the sugar in

a japanned epaulette box. The two little slaves having discharged their

office, returned and stood with crossed arms against the white wall,

which cast forth as from the field of a phantasmagoria, their plump,

symmetrical and dark limbs. They seemed to have been sent on the part

of the female household to do all the work of gazing on the strangers;

and if I had to judge by them of those we did not see, Mike Brettel’s

Harem, for beauty, originality, and sprightliness, had little to fear

from competition, far or near.

I was accompanied by the consular agent, his soldier, and a common Jew.

After Mr. Leraza and I were seated, the soldier was invited to sit

down, and then the Jew: he did so quite familiarly, close to the master

of the house, who, with his own hand served him, after the rest, with

tea.

The room was a cube of fifteen feet; there was one small window, a

simple aperture in the white wall in the form of a niche struck through

the thickness of the wall, levelled inside; this feature took the

apartment out of the common-place. On the floor was spread one of their

beautiful mats; on the three sides were mattresses covered with Turkey

carpets, and cushions at each end resembling a low Turkish divan. The

walls were dead white, broken by richly-ornamented arm-racks. Three

long guns on each in their red cloth cases, daggers in massive chased

silver scabbards, swords and pouches, were suspended by silk cords with

large tassels, blue, red and yellow. The crown of the room was the

ceiling: an octagon dome was fitted on to the cube by means of arches

in the angles, which will be understood by reference to the Hall of

the Ambassadors, in Owen Jones’s Alhambra; but the roof, instead of

being in coloured stucco, was in carved and painted wood. There was no

gilding or silvering--the effect was worked out entirely from dead

colour. I looked at it till my neck was sore and stiff, and I can only

describe it by the word arabesque, just as I might say kaleidoscope,

and in like manner, interminable: the same elements re-appear in

never-ending forms, ever pleasing, ever new, yet always, in so far as

description can go, the same. The roof was the statue, the apartment

the pedestal: each required the other. The solitary light, the pure

white walls, the cubic form, were required to set off the placid beauty

of the dome. The window was minute; the door (if one might say so in

reference to so small a body,) grand. Its horse-shoe arch expanded to

the sides and reached the vault, displaying the little vestibule, all

variegated in colours, all ornamented in form like the ceiling. It was

a thing not to live in, but to gaze at.

We next got our host to permit us to examine the arms. One was of

Tetuan manufacture, one of Fez; the first spirally fluted on the

outside: both barrels were inlaid with gold, were four feet and a half

long, and ornamented at the muzzle like old pieces of ordnance. The

mounting was silver, ornamented with the black figures which in the

East are called _Sabat_. The locks were cumbersome, the work intricate,

and all outside. There is a covering to the powder in the pan like the

old pieces of the French Gardes du Corps. The price was twenty-five and

thirty-five dollars: I should have guessed them at double. The daggers

were in no way remarkable; but the cases, handles, and cords were very

rich: one sword rang like a Damascus blade. Their swords are long and

straight, slightly bent towards the point, and have a heavy thick

handle with a peculiar guard.[241]

The only other piece of furniture was a Turkish _sofra_, or small

hexagonal stool inlaid in tortoiseshell and mother of pearl, on which

is placed the _tepsi_, or round tray for dinner. The carving of the

_sofra_ is peculiar, and might be taken for the model of some portion

of a Gothic building. I now saw that this was no Turkish piece of

furniture: the Turks, like the Romans, have borrowed from every other

people what was most elegant or useful. Augustus introduced a stool

from Spain to Rome--why should not one have been carried from Morocco

to Constantinople?

As this Moor was reaching down one of the guns, his haïk fell off,

displaying a rich blue and red vesture, while the volumes of the

white toga cast their majestic folds around. Close by stood the

Numidians--two antique bronzes. _We_ cultivate the arts: _we_ raise

to the rank of sages and princes the men who excel in conceiving and

portraying beautiful forms. _Their_ works are the embellishments of

temples and palaces, the glory of empires and the worth of millions.

_They_ have no schools of design; no science of colours; no artist--no,

nor even tailors; and yet there was his costume--there was mine. I

attempted to convey this to him: he said, “Our fathers have left us

many good things, and we are content with them.”

Proceeding on our inspection, we passed through a succession of small

courts and corridors, as if we were in the under-story of a palace.

There were four houses joined together by doors broken through the

wall: these houses are fitted one against the other like so many boxes,

the lights coming from the court in the centre of each. In the kitchens

there was a great assortment of wood dishes, like low corn measures,

scrubbed white, as in Switzerland; rows of round pots, in which the

fires are made, called _nafé_; and kuskoussoo dishes of pottery called

Keskas, the covers in thick close basket-work, ornamented with colours.

Every place, thing, corner, was most perfectly sweet and clean. On

entering the store rooms it seemed as if we had penetrated into a

chamber at Pompeii. (The whole establishment recalled Pompeii.) Jars

of the shape and dimensions of amphoræ, only transversed at the point,

stood in rows containing, not, indeed, Falernian wine, but kuskoussoo,

pease, butter, rice, and even fresh meat. After it is packed, butter

is kneaded hard into the orifice, and water is poured over it. Homer

says, that in Lybia neither prince nor peasant wants for food, and this

was confirmed by the large scale on which the arrangements were here

made to meet the demands of hospitality. One of the court-yards, with

an adjoining kitchen and store, was appropriated to cooking food, to be

sent out to friends and strangers.

We now entered a court which rivalled the first apartment--all white,

light and airy. At each of the angles there was a group of three

columns, and from them sprang a lofty fretted arch, which occupied the

centre of each of the faces. A narrow cornice in coloured stucco under

the projecting eaves ran all round; so the stuccoes of Spain are not a

lost art.

From this truly barbaresque hall, open to the heavens, we passed into

the women’s principal apartment. It was a long and very narrow room,

entered in the centre by lofty folding doors: the wicket only was open.

At each extremity was a bed filling the width of the apartment, raised

high and concealed by brocade curtains. In two successive stages were

mattresses piled and covered with rich stuffs, and cushions, serving

for divans by day and beds by night. The open space in the centre was

covered with a mat, and there were low narrow seats around of folded

carpets and coverlids. On each side of the door were wardrobe chests.

The room, to the height of four and a half feet, was hung with red

velvet, inlaid to imitate mosaics; but perhaps the mosaics may be the

imitation with velvet of other colours.

The embroidery on the cushions, &c., is unlike anything else. There

are patches of colour as though formed by a succession of the palms of

an Indian shawl, one row blue, another red, and so on: the stitches

are long and the work looks like satin with bindings, each long stitch

being followed by a short one. There were fastened to the wall, and

projecting from it, those many-coloured racks or brackets of which I

have spoken, on which stood fine china-ware and ornaments. The rafters

of the roof were ornamented in like manner, vermilion predominating.

The sleeping apartment had portals like a church,[242] their hinges and

sockets were on the outside; the large slabs were of arbor-vitæ, soft

as velvet to the touch, and rubbed over with red ochre.

We were treated to a sight of the contents of the chests. The dresses

were principally in brocade of Lyons; but otherwise, they were inferior

to those of the Jewesses of Tangier and Tetuan, and had not the merit

of native taste and work. Not so the jewellery. One necklace was

peculiar: it was formed of large gold pieces, some of them cufic and

coral balls, divided by bunches of pearls, in the centre of each of

which there was a pierced amethyst. For the negresses, the necklaces

were large coral beads and silver coins alternately, the coins being

strung through the centre. The necklace does not go round the neck,

but from shoulder to shoulder. At the shoulder it is fastened to a

brooch of a very singular construction, and is in various ways a most

interesting ornament. It is circular, and serves also to secure the

haïk and in it the most precious stones they have are placed. One was

an emerald an inch and a quarter in diameter. Such were Aaron’s ouches

on the[243] shoulders to which the chains were attached.

This brooch is called _kefkiat_, and has a moveable tongue which

traverses round a circle, in which there is a slip, so that after

passing the tongue through the folds that are to be secured, you

turn the circle and thereby the tongue fits on upon it as if it were

a buckle. When I saw it, I was immediately reminded of the Highland

brooch for the plaid, to which they have adopted the stones which their

Hyperborean country affords; and I recollected having seen an ancient

one which seemed to be like these. On visiting Dublin, subsequently to

my return from Barbary, I saw in the museum numerous kefkiats, and on

recognizing them as old friends, I was assured by the learned that I

must be mistaken, for that these ornaments were peculiar to the Irish

Celts. However, there they are--alone found in Ireland--alone worn in

Barbary.

In an unfinished corner of the Tower Hassan, I found the wall as it had

been prepared for the stucco: it was divided off in lines, crossing

at right angles, like the frame-work that artists sometimes use, to

verify the exactness of a copy. Over these were drawn a succession

of intersecting segments of circles. By these they could work with

certainty and celerity, and the mere intersection of the plain and

curved lines formed the suggested patterns. This may account for the

interminable variety of these, and the uniformity of their character.

The stuccoes were of plaster of Paris, and on getting one of the

workmen to describe the process of making it, I found that near Fez

there is a large supply of arrowheaded selenite, corresponding with

that of Montmartre, near Paris.[244] The colour is laid on with white

of egg. The great instrument of the Moorish artist is the compass.

The Moorish compass is not composed of two limbs of metal jointed. It

is a fixed measure and tied by a string; so that for each different

dimension there is a separate compass, and its name is _davit_, which

we retain for the bent stanchions used in vessels to hoist up boats.

Arabs have no buildings: their tent was their habitation. No traces

of their architecture are to be found in the two ancient cities of

Mecca and Medina. The Caaba itself was a square building, as if the

two poles of the transverse one of the flying tent had been doubled

for the stationary one, and the Caaba, in sign and memory thereof, is

hung with drapery to this day.[245] The Arabs, however, appear to have

spread architecture over Europe, Asia, and Africa;--they who possess

neither ancient ruins nor modern dwellings. These, with the materials

and models, are found in Morocco, preserved in the midst of ignorance,

unobscured and unchanged.

Architecture is the peculiar feeling and passion of this people. The

figures which we find in our cathedrals and ancient churches, are

scattered about their domestic establishments, are to be seen in their

trays, on their stools, and in endless variety upon their tombstones.

They have not, like us, a domestic and a public, a religious and a

civil architecture. Alone have they combined delicacy and strength. In

their edifices there is the durability of the rock and the delicacy of

the flower. It would seem as if they at once thought only of to-day

and only of eternity. Nor have there been with them different ages and

styles--one of strong and busy war, another of idle elegance: their

strongest and rudest military works preserve the choicest specimen

of arts, which elsewhere have required, that they might spring and

blossom, times of peace and ages of refinement.

I cannot resist the temptation of quoting from the “Quarterly Review,”

a glowing description of Moorish dwellings.

“The exterior of Moorish edifices in general was plain and forbidding;

the object was to keep out heat and enemies, foreign and domestic,

and to keep in women and to disarm the evil eye--the great bugbear of

antiquity, the East, Andalusia, and Naples. The interior, all light,

air, colour, and luxury, glittered like a spar enclosed in a rough

pebble, and the door once opened, ushered the Moor into a houri-peopled

palace which realised those gorgeous descriptions that seem to our good

folks, who live in bricks and mortar, to be the fictions of oriental

poetry, or the fabric of Aladdin’s genii; yet such were the palatial

fortresses--the Abazares, the Alhambras of the Spanish Moors; and

such, on a minor scale, were their private dwellings, many of which

still exist in Seville, though dimmed by ages and neglect. The generic

features are, a court hidden from public gaze, but open to the blue

sky, and surrounded with horse-shoe-arched corridors, which rest on

palm-like pillars of marble, whose spandrils are pierced in gossamer

lace-work; in the centre plays a fountain, gladdening the air with

freshness, the ear with music, the eye with dropping diamonds. On the

walls around, was lavished a surface of mosaic decoration, richer than

shawls of cashmere, wrought in porcelain and delicate plaster, and

painted with variegated tints; above hung a roof of Phœnician-like

carpentry, gilded and starred as a heaven; while the doors and

windows admitted vistas of gardens of myrtles, roses, oranges, and

pomegranates, where fruit mingled with flower and colour vied with

fragrance.”

FOOTNOTES:

[241] There is in Meyrick’s collection an old Highland sword with the

same guard.

[242] “The first consuls of Rome, L. V. Publicola and L. Brutus, as

also the brother of the latter, had in their patents for the few lands

granted them, the distinction of having their gates to open outward

instead of inward.”--Pliny, l. xxxvi. c. 15.

[243] It is the three-fourths of a circle with a Job at each extremity,

and a moveable tongue lying upon it. The necklaces do not pass round

the neck, but are worn in front, only each end being fastened to the

brooch. With this coincides the description in Exodus of Aaron’s ephod

in c. xxviii. and xxxix. The two onyx stones engraved with the names of

the tribes were to be borne upon the two shoulders, and there were to

be two ouches of gold to fasten the stones, from which a chain should

depend, fastened to the breastplate.

[244] The houses here are better than any in Morocco, and look like

casts in plaster, being built piece by piece in moulds.--DAVIDSON’S

Journal in Fez, p. 86.

[245] The Carthaginians hang drapery on their walls. In the Peninsula,

for ceremonies, the streets are sometimes entirely lined with drapery,

and the interior of the churches in Spain have drapery fitted for

them like clothes. The cathedral of Seville may be seen in Holy Week

undergoing changes like the decorations of a theatre.

BOOK III.

THE ARAB TENT.

CHAPTER I.

HUNTING EXPEDITION TO SHAVOYA.

I have already stated my object in visiting Barbary, and its

frustration. I thought it best, therefore, to abstain from any

intercourse with the Moorish government on political matters, and to

take advantage of the entrance I had obtained to see the country. I

soon, however, found myself the object of suspicion. If I spoke of

visiting Fez or Morocco, I was mysteriously motioned to be silent. The

guards assigned to me watched me as a prisoner. I was not suffered to

cross the threshold without a written order from the Caïd. The prospect

before me was close confinement until I could get over the bar as I

had entered, and for that deliverance I might have to wait six months.

In this dilemma, I bethought myself of an expedient. Geology, in these

countries, is a delicate subject. There are the jealousy of avarice and

the fear of consequences. They associate with their mines the former

invasion, and almost conquest by Portugal; and indeed the Portuguese

seem to have drawn considerable stores of gold from this country. They

opened many mines; in every case, as soon as the Moors got possession,

_the mines were filled up_. A promising sulphur manufactory had been

recently set up at Fez, by a renegade Frenchman: it was, by order of

the government, levelled with the ground, and all the instruments

destroyed, lest it should furnish a new attraction to the French; yet

it was to geology and mines that I had recourse to unbolt the gates of

Rabat. I raised the question _ex abrupto_--spoke of mines to everybody,

and exposed the folly of denying to themselves resources, &c. These

discussions reached the Sultan; curiosity was excited, and the matter

debated; the ludicrous exhibition they had made by ruining the sulphur

works, partly admitted mineral investigation, and had its partizans,

and at last I received the acceptable intimation that I might go and

“hunt wild boars” in the province of Shavoya, whence an inquisitive

chief had brought a specimen of “madein,”--a magnificent crystal, or

spiculated mass of cromate of iron.

On the forenoon of the 23rd of December, the permission reached me,

and the Sheik, with geological cravings, the chief of the provincial

tribe, was to be my companion, together with three of the Sultan’s own

body-guard, and a guard from the Caïd of Rabat. The consul, Mr. Leraza,

volunteered his services as interpreter, and in the scarcity of horses,

I was obliged to leave behind my English scribe.

The consulate was immediately like a disturbed ant-hill, and the sun

was still some fathoms above his western bed, when we found ourselves

beyond the walls, and fairly plunged into the living desert--for

desert it was as soon as the town was shut out. We shortly turned

down to the right and threaded our way along the margin, where Africa

and the Atlantic meet. The one bore no house, the other no sail--not

a vestige of man’s toil on the earth, nor on the ocean a sign of his

daring:--they were alone in their immensity. Again striking inward we

lost sight of the sea, and under the reigning solitude could fancy

ourselves approaching the Zahara.

The waste was not, however, dry sand or parched deserts; the land wore

a rich vesture, and its tissue was of flowers. The wild growth of the

fan-like palmetto, that most useful of comparatively useless plants,

predominated. Its services to man were presently made known to me. I

had on board a package of saddles and bridles used years ago while

travelling in the East. Three sets had been put in requisition without

undergoing the requisite repairs and revisions; girths, buckles,

straps, gave way one after the other in a manner which in any other

country would soon have brought us to a stand still; but on each

mischance a man would slip off, make a grasp at a doum branch, and

commence plaiting: between the ductility of the leaf and the dexterity

of their fingers, girths and bands were miraculously restored, buckles

and ties supplied.

Around the doum were scattered the narcissus, and the plant of the

“gardens of the blessed,” the asphodel. Here we were on the very verge

of that sacred west, towards which the living looked where the dead

should dwell, within those granitic arms which extend to receive the

departed spirit.[246] The fourth plant was the _festouk_. This is

honoured by the name of Esculapius: it resembles fennel, but is much

longer, the shoots standing eight or ten feet. The gum ammoniac is

collected from it in the south. A fly with a horn in the head pierces

the trunk, and causes the gum to flow. The stem serves in Spain and

Morocco as a razor strop. Great as is our proficiency in cutlery, we

cannot put an edge on a razor like the Moors, or shave as they do. They

lay the instrument to the very root and make, so to speak, an excision

of its growth. Barbers get their name, no doubt, from Breber; that was

the early mode of supplying names to professions. The shaving of the

head was unknown to the Greeks, Romans or Egyptians, and the hair was

always left untouched till the age of manhood, when it was cut short

and consecrated. The tombs of Lycia exhibit to us boys with shaved

heads and a little tuft, as at present worn by the Mussulmans. This

practice of the “Barbarians” of Asia Minor may well have suggested

the word, though we do not apply it as it was originally applied, in

a geographical sense. The usages of Morocco are so far Mussulman only

as the Mussulmans have adopted them. The shaved head and chin are

Philistine, and, therefore, perhaps the Jews were forbidden to shave

the corners of their beards, and the lock on the temple remains their

distinctive mark. The first man who shaved the chin daily at Rome was

Scipio Africanus. The pith of the festouk serves as a slow match. It

was in it (νάσθηξ) that Prometheus concealed the fire he filched from

Heaven.

These four plants seemed equally distributed over every patch of

ground, and extended over the whole face of the country. The flowers

of the asphodel stood higher than a man. The soil is mere sand; but

between the clumps of flowers a little grass might be seen.

About seven o’clock, it having been some time dark, we came suddenly

upon fires and crowds of squatters, and bales heaped around them: the

herds of crouching camels had a strange appearance among the people

and the smoke. It was a small caravan settled round a Douar. We were

preparing to pitch outside, but in the hurry of our departure, or

rather flight, the tent pins had been forgotten. The sheik immediately

removed his family out of his own tent to accommodate us.

At length I beheld an Arab camp--at length I entered an Arab tent! I

would not have exchanged that sight for the possession of a palace.

That first hour must remain associated with every effort to picture the

ancient world--with every judgment of its present condition.

When we were comfortably arranged, the sheik brought a flat bowl with

a pile of _hot scous_. As he set them down he said, “scou!” The two

Scotchmen of the party had been surprised at the sight of the dish,

but they were electrified when they heard the word: their astonishment

burst forth in a way that puzzled and amazed the sheik. In his turn he

was delighted with the explanation. The Douar, the Buled, the Cabaile,

are mere extensions of the family and multiplications of the tent: the

blood relationship runs through all; the parentage, therefore, of a

race is of as much interest to them as that of an individual. “Every

Arab of the present day,” says Burckhardt, “can tell back his fathers

and their collateral relatives to the ninth generation.” In the last

generation a Highlander would do the same.[247] But memory, like man,

has lost its early longevity. At the time of Mahomet every Arab could

trace back twenty generations.[248] through ages; whose people had

remained almost to our

This Arab was delighted to hear of a race in England with patriarchal

chiefs whose line ascended unbroken times unchanged; who had their

own language,[249] who had a diet, part of which was “scous,”[250] and

a dress, part of which was a haïk. He came and embraced me, when I

told him that my forefathers had dwelt amongst them, and had left the

_usted_ as their memorial. The sympathy for which I was here indebted

to my Highland blood, did not, as in Europe, spring from antipathy to

England. At this moment, in Morocco, England is the idol. To her every

eye is turned: they make inquiries, and hang upon your answer. One

Englishman is peculiarly the object of their regard. There is not one

of them who is not familiar with the name of “Palmerston.” Seldom did a

day pass that I was not asked respecting the chances of his return to

office, and many a kindly pat on the back did I receive.

Though our journey had not exceeded a dozen miles, we were completely

exhausted by our day of preparations, and had not yet tasted food;

so, making our supper upon this _hors d’œuvre_, the scous, we laid

ourselves down. My companions soon resigned themselves to the empire

of fatigue, and I, mesmerized by the waves of the Numidian folds,

seemed to see the sides of the tent open on dim vistas of long years,

through which great shadows flitted. Tacferinas rose, and, beyond,

Jugurtha; there were mingled, like ghosts upon the shore of Styx,

Hunerick and Hannibal, Nebuchadnezzar and Cervantes, Don Sebastian and

St. Louis. Pictured scenes danced on the textile cloud--Moosa on the

cliff of the Atlantic; Marius amidst Byrsa’s shattered battlements;

Juba in his purple; Lot in his sackcloth; Rachel at the well; and,

walking from the canvas, Abraham stood in the door. How many more from

Atlas to Nelson--how many deeds from the battle of the gods to that

of Trafalgar--what thrones and sceptred hands from the old Muley of

Carteïa,[251] to the present one of Fez! At length the phantoms were

cleared away, though not by light, and the vision was broken, because

I fell from trance to slumber; and sense then let in what fancy had

before kept out--the noises of an Arab camp by night.

To each tent there is at least one dog. The sheep ten per tent, expert

in imitating old men’s cough. There are asses and horses secured with

chains, and cattle (the _mugitus bovum_) mingle with the brayings

of the one and the clanking of the other. The steeds are peculiarly

quarrelsome, and their differences provoke the otherwise tranquil

camels, who, when aroused, give it to one another in their own Xantippe

fashion. Through all these pierced the infantine cry of the kid and

goat. Lastly, there is chanticleer, reared from Jebusite eggs,--not

like our sober cock, contented with a morning crow or two--but

repeating hour by hour, and all night long, the warning notes which

startled Peter. Take then the sum--eighty cocks, forty camels, forty

asses, forty horses, eight hundred sheep, four hundred goats, one

hundred dogs--or fifteen hundred animals, called “dumb,” pent up in a

circle of three hundred yards’ diameter, in the middle of which your

tent is pitched! Speak, then, of “Nature’s soft nurse.”

A watch was appointed. They came, bringing their dogs to sleep round

the tent, and, of course, to sup with our guards and attendants. It

was near eleven o’clock before they “sat down.” Arabs speak loud and

long, and all together. They were long at their supper--longer at their

talk. When they had done, the dogs fought for the bones, and continued

after they were picked. As soon as they had concluded, the children

in the school commenced, all at once, every one a different lesson,

as loud as their throats could shriek, and as fast as their tongues

could clatter. One sense was not, however, to be racked alone:--the

process of acupuncture soon commenced with such vigour and method that,

when daylight appeared, not one square line of my whole body remained

unsuffused with a roseate hue. Hitherto, I had secured myself against

this Egyptian plague, by a musquito curtain sewed to a sheet,[252]

but had neglected to have one when needed most. When I stirred up the

party, as I did betimes, the consolation I received was, “You are lucky

that it is winter, or you must have had musquitoes into the bargain!”

Each night it was the same. I recognized my old acquaintance among

sheep, kids, dogs, camels--the same school-boys followed us everywhere,

and we had over and over again the Lancasterian method in the morning.

Not till the fourth night--after all expedients--cotton-stuffing,

bandages, &c., had failed--did exhausted Nature close her ears and mine.

We started next morning under a Scotch mist, and were soon wet to the

skin. After four or five hours’ toiling, yet advancing little, we

turned restiff from cold and hunger, and desired to be housed, dried,

or, at all events, fed. I insisted, as the direction we travelled in

mattered little, on going in search of a Douar. For two hours more we

continued to stray. Having missed the one we had sought, and avoiding

others which were in sight, our course became to me at last utterly

incomprehensible. I thought that wherever there was a tent there was a

welcome, and wherever a roof, a shelter. I now discovered my mistake.

I insisted on approaching a very small Douar of about fifteen tents,

to which some old men and boys of most forbidding appearance, were

driving in the cattle. The soldiers went to them, and standing long

conversing, I advanced towards the Douar; they rushed at me with

violent gestures. M. Seruya offered them money, but they derided him,

and signed to us to be off.

It was strange: we had offended in nothing; we demanded nothing; we

only begged for shelter, and we were willing to pay for it. They were

Arabs: we were strangers. Our party was calculated to command respect

or enforce obedience, being composed of officers from the city, the

sheik of a neighbouring tribe, emissaries of the Sultan: we outnumbered

them, and were armed and mounted. Yet the sense of hospitality, money,

authority, strength availed us nothing; I asked for an explanation but

gained none. Then came the question--the Homeric question, “Who are

you?--of what race, of what land?”

Εἴπὲ δέ μοι γαῖαν τε τεὴν δῆμον τε πόλιν τέ.

Now light broke in. I had to ask the name, not of a village but a

tribe.[253] A tribe might be trodden down, not the individuals; these

were not a dozen shepherds:--they were _Saba_, who muster two thousand

five hundred firelocks. This tribe had travelled from Arabia: they

could go back to-morrow if they liked. They might have come yesterday,

or a thousand, or two, or three thousand years ago. To such as they

are, time brings no change, distance presents no obstacle. But this

name was not heard now for the first time. Was it they, perchance, who

stole Job’s cattle? Did any of them accompany their queen to Jerusalem?

How do these bear the patronymic of that mysterious stock? Sheba was

the firstborn of Cush and elder to Phut and Canaan and Mizram. Yet I

could not call them with Isaiah “men of stature.” These Saba have seen

arise and pass away the great empires of the earth. They will live when

that one to which the wanderer belongs, whom they would not receive, is

gone to be addressed by the shades of Nineveh and Babylon, “Art thou

too become as one of us?” Well, they did not choose that we should

enter, and we had neither right to question nor complain. My escort

were Moors, not Frenchmen.

The Saba were, however, civil enough to direct us to one of the Douars

of our sheik’s tribe,--the _Zieïda_. We reached it about nightfall, and

without halt or parley, rode right in. Like the change of a theatre

by the scene-shifter’s whistle, a couple of tents all standing, the

poles, cords, &c., being manned, were lifted from their place and

advanced into the centre: matting was spread upon the deep, wet

verdure: blazing wood was brought from neighbouring fires, piled into

a fire, and in the twinkling of an eye we were roofed, sheltered,

settled about our hearth, and in our home, where a moment before

the earth lay bare, wet, cold, dark, and comfortless. Then came the

elders. The owner of the tent brought a sheep to present at the door:

another eggs; another a jar of butter. It was painful and strange

to me not to be able to converse with them, and to my instant and

repeated inquiries, I could get from my interpreter nothing more than

“compliments,”--“compliments.” They soon retired to leave us to get

dried, and then was repeated to me their request, which was, that we

should think favourably of them now, and speak well of them hereafter.

I said, “the proverb runs through the world, ‘hospitable as an Arab,’

now I know it is a truth.” They presently returned with demonstrations

of gratitude, my words having been repeated from tent to tent round the

Douar.

Often during this second sleepless night did those words recur to

me--“_We are Saba_.” Suppose that one of Job’s descendants had been of

the party, we might have set up a claim for the cattle. The Egyptians

demanded from the colony of Jews introduced into Egypt by Alexander,

repayment for the jewels which the Jewish women had carried away. The

claim was admitted, but they pleaded value given in “brick-making.”

Alexander held the defendants entitled to a verdict. Eight centuries

did not give amongst them the strength to Time which with us is

acquired from seven years.

Sheba signified oath;[254] thus Beersheba, the well of the oath. They

were the words of the mystery of objurgation, the basis of religions

and governments.

The inventions of a people have in antiquity received their name; thus

have many vocables been formed. It is in this manner that language

becomes history. We have centre courts (atrea), from the manner of

building of Atrea. _Gauze_ from Gaza; _calico_ from Calient; _muslin_

from Masulipatam; _embroiderers_ (_Phrygiones_) from Phrygia. _Towers_

from the Tyrians; _ceremonies_ from Cere. In Spain to-day a waggon

is called _Elheudi_ (the Jew). These single words, as clearly as if

written on tables of brass, as surely as if sworn to by myriads of

witnesses, prove their etymon to be fact. The Jews introduced chariots

into Spain; the Etruscans religious forms into Rome, and so for oath,

the Saba use the inventions of the ritual of ancient superstition.

Above one thousand years ago, the answer given to me was given to a

Calif El Mamrou, who while on his march to attack the Roman empire,

meeting a tribe with narrow tunics like the Persians, and long hair,

called them to him, and asked them who they were. They answered, “We

are Harrane.” He then said, “Are you Christians?” which they denied. He

then asked, “Are you Jews?” That they denied also. Then he said, “Have

you got no book, and do you follow no prophet?” And as they returned

an uncertain answer, he said to them, “Ye are idolaters, and deserve

death!” They then alleged that they paid tribute and had contracted

with the Mussulmans; but he tells them that they are not of the number

of those who can make contracts, and threatens to extirpate them to

the last child unless, on his return, they had professed Islam, or one

of the religions mentioned in the book (Judaism or Christianity). They

then changed their clothes and cut off their hair; and some became

Christians and some Mussulmans; but many would not; and being in great

fear of the Calif’s return, they applied to an old man to know what

they should do. He said to them, “When Mamrou returns, answer him, ‘WE

ARE SABA,’ which is the name of the religion which the Great God has

named in the Koran; and thus let us be freed from him!”[255]

Mahomet makes Abraham, when passing from Irak into Syria, fall in with

Saba, “versed in old books, and who believed what they contained.”

Then Abraham says to God: “It does not appear that in the world there

are any but I and those who are with me, who are faithful and believe

in thee alone. So God ordered him to preach to them; and he called to

them, but they would not obey him. ‘How should we,’ said they, ‘believe

thee who canst not read?’ So God sent upon them forgetfulness of those

sciences and books which they knew.”

And this, then, is the last remnant of the people who first fixed

the hours of the day--the points of the compass,--who taught the

courses of the stars[256]--who were the teachers of letters, and the

first law-givers.[257] Small in numbers, scattered without being

disconnected, they had their settlements in Arabia Felix; on the Red

Sea; on the Persian Gulf; in Syria; in Asia Minor, and in the far

regions of the West; and linked with their camels the sea-borne traffic

of their twin race with the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Yet of them the

stock remains--not one orphan of Tyre subsists.

The next morning was beautiful; and turning to the eastward, we

proceeded on our journey, expecting early in the day to reach sheik

Tibi’s own Douar. We came upon patches or outliers of the cork forests.

In ten miles I counted sixteen Douars, averaging seventy tents; and

the furthest from us on each side was not more than two miles. Thence

for fifteen miles, though the land was cultivated, there was neither

tent nor tree to be seen. The soil, almost sand, is thinly spread

over a face of rock. The festouks and asphodels had disappeared, and

lilies supplied their place; but not a fly, nor a bird, nor a spider,

nor insect, save ants. The hollows were marshes or little lakes; but

nowhere was the mould shaped by the action of water,--nowhere did the

soil imbibe the rain to hold and discharge it,--no trace of a rivulet.

This tract extends along the whole coast, averaging twenty miles in

width and five hundred feet in height. Schist, slate, and quartz-rock

protrude through it in some places, the line of bearing being at right

angles to the coast. I have already explained this formation, the

peculiarity of which consists in the surface being converted into

stone. At one place the road crossed what looked like a rivulet; but

the extent of its course was 250 yards, that is to say, this was the

whole distance from the first indenting of the ground till it had

opened into a deep chasm. Wherever water filters through, the sand is

removed and the rock falls in; and then the rent goes on like a crack

in a plate of glass, widening and deepening to the sea.

This is a landscape requiring a new name. I now could understand that

strange term, “Rolling Prairies:”--it must be a similar formation,

swelling, but not hill-like; tame, but not valley-like; expanse not

like that of the sea; undulations not like those of the land; and over

the whole a preadamite vastness, unbroken till you come abruptly to the

edge of the gulfs. Were the elevation thousands instead of hundreds of

feet, and the distance from the sea thousands instead of tens of miles,

then it would require but snake-grass and buffaloes to witness an

estampado without crossing the Atlantic. It was quite delightful to get

upon the hills again: they were rugged aluminous schist, well clothed

with trees of extreme beauty, but moderate size, principally the cork

oak. I here first saw the Arar, the Thuya articulata, a tree between a

cypress in the leaf, and a pine in the figure. The wood is invaluable;

no worm touches it, and it endures for ever; it does not split; and

though hard is easily wrought. They use it for the beams of the houses

which are near the ceilings of apartments: those ceilings of “cedar and

vermilion,” that we read of in the Prophets and the “Arabian Nights.”

It has the odour of the cedar, and yields pitch and turpentine. There

is also an evergreen like the thorn, bearing a berry like the haw:

they call it _Berri_, and make oil from it. This is the Eliodendron of

the Greeks. Further to the south there is the _Argan_, from the nut

of which a much esteemed oil is made. The oak furnishes the Bellotis,

which, without ceasing to be an Arcadian, is here a real food.

Habits still draw very closely on the Arcadian. Water is their drink;

their food milk and wheat not fermented, and subjected to scarcely any

cooking. To their grain and milk they add dried fruits, fresh acorns,

palmetto root, truffles, the lotus berry, and the like. The country

produces the plants which yield sago and arrow-root.

Hunting was not the primitive state of man, nor flesh his original

diet. If all the literature of the world were destroyed except that

of the Hudson’s Bay Company, such a belief might be pardonable in

future times. We put ourselves in a similar predicament when we take

the pictures of early Greece as the first steps of the human race.

The names of the first slayers of animals and eaters of flesh have

been recorded, and yet we treat as a fable all that is enumerated of

these times, because they talk of living upon acorns. A garden was the

residence of our first parents.

I had made one step backward towards the reality of early fable, when

I wandered in the indubitable Hesperides and plucked their golden

fruit; but now, amongst the cork forests, and seeing acorns and glands

plucked and fed upon, I made a second, and reached the golden age

itself.

A man may thus travel and find food wherever he stretches out his

hand, or lays him down to rest. I do not say it is a very agreeable

diet, perhaps not a very nutritious one; but still here are roots,

and plants, and glands, which will sustain life without the aid of

cookery; and populations might spread and multiply, sustained by the

spontaneous gifts of the earth. The first peopling of the globe remains

the greatest of wonders; for what can be to us more unaccountable than

the ease of their travels, the order of their society, the distinctness

of their character, the rapidity of their growth?

The Douar for which we were bound was beyond the hills. We had,

therefore, to cross them, and from the summit the view opened to the

eastward a totally different scene. From this height the country behind

looked like a swelling sea--before us it was all in heaps. No vacant

space and no rocky side, but as if earth had been carted to the spot by

tunnelling giants, and shot out there.

We found the Douar perched on the summit of a knoll;--the circle of

tents looked like a diadem upon its brow. Our tent was pitched in the

centre, that is, at the top. As soon as it was in order, our Tibi came

to bid us welcome: he was a simple, sedulous man, and from the first to

the last moment was just the same. They paraded us round the circle,

and we were passed from group to group to be examined, patted, and

discussed. The round of visits ended at the Sheik, and I was ushered

in among his three wives;--and here was a busy scene. The tent, though

I speak from recollection, was little short of forty feet in length

and twenty in width; the cross-bar supporting it in the middle might

be ten or twelve feet high; the covering swept down, so that towards

the extremities you had to crouch or creep. In the centre and around

were piled up stores of provisions, clothing, and the like, arranged

for the convenience of sitting or sleeping. There were three or four

small fires, chiefly of embers, on which were boiling large brown jars

with long necks, as if preparing for some great feast. The principal

wife would soon by her appearance have arrested my attention, had

she allowed me or any one else to be ignorant of her presence and

authority. She was comely, bold, haughty, supple in body, dexterous of

hand. Seated within reach of the two or three fires, she was proceeding

to dispose of the cooking viands, which, with a huge ladle, she

heaped up in corresponding dishes. She was giving her orders without

intermitting her work, and all the work of the tent--culinary, at

least,--seemed to pass through her hands.

The dish was kuscoussoo, so I was not to lose such an opportunity. What

had been despatched was for the supply of guests who had arrived before

us: she now had to recommence for us. When I had succeeded in conveying

to her my desire to be instructed in the process of its manufacture,

she gazed at me, and asked what I had eaten all my life, and what

the women in my country did? After briefly satisfying her curiosity,

she made a place for me beside herself, and though her hands never

ceased to flutter about and skim over the contents of her tray, like a

bird’s wings, nor her tongue to run on; when any part of the operation

required attention, she did not fail to awaken mine.

FOOTNOTES:

[246] These arms are represented by the verge of the papyri of the

mummies. The bodies were buried with the face turned to the west. In

sacrificing to the manes they turned to the west.--_Schol. Apoll.

Rhod._ vol. i. p. 580. In sacrificing on Mount Moriah Abraham turned to

the west.

[247] The last bard of Clanronald, in making an affidavit before a

magistrate, enumerated his ancestors to the ninth generation.

[248] Fresnal, Hist. des Arabes avant l’Islomism--_Introduction_.

[249] At Tangier the idea of an affinity between the Brebers and the

Celts is commonly entertained. Mr. Hay and others mentioned to me,

that Highland soldiers coming over from Gibraltar, could understand

the natives. He points out in his work the coincidence of Breber and

Gaelic words; but when these resemblances are found, they are of words

borrowed, and not from any affinity between the languages.

[250] _Scou_ in Arabic means _hot_, as they ought to be eaten, and the

expression “hot scous” is a pleonasm.

[251] Melcarth, from Mel and Cardt, Prince of the City (Carteia), was

the title of Hercules. The Jewish word was Malik. The title proper of

the Sultan of Morocco is Muley; thence Molla of the Turks.

[252] One side is gored out like the mouth of a sack: by this you

enter, dropping all clothes outside, and the sack’s mouth is then tied

round with a cord.

[253] A remarkable conversation is given in Wilson’s “Lands of the

Bible,” vol. i. p. 330, with the sheik of a tribe which he found among

the ruins of Petra, and who recounted the story of his lineage and the

place.

[254] Also “perfect” and “seven,” the perfect number completing the

“planets” and the “week.” The nasal sound gave _zebon_, whence some

derive our word _seven_, also the σέζας of the Greeks.

[255] Hottinger, De Reb. Sab. l. i. c. 8.

[256] Landseer, Sabæan Res.

[257] “Perhaps the most perfect, and certainly the most widely extended

religious system which was ever invented by the unassisted reason of

man.”--DRUMMOND’S _Origines_, iii. 431.

CHAPTER II.

KUSCOUSSOO.

Two women sat in front grinding, and as they proceeded filled the

flour into a basket. My hostess, seated on the ground, had in her lap

a round wooden tray three feet in diameter, the edge resting on the

round. The flour-basket was on the right hand, a jar of water on the

left. She first took a handful of flour, and dusted it into the tray,

then, dipping both hands in the water, passed them through it, and so

continued dusting and dipping and then making sweeps right and left

through the growing mass, which gradually shaped itself into small

grains. The fingers passing quickly and lightly, through and over it,

the little moistened particles were augmented from the dry flour, and

new ones formed. The art consists in causing it to granulate, and in

preventing it from clotting. Each grain receives with its several

coatings pressure and manipulation. We are all familiar with the change

of substance produced by working crumbs of bread between the fingers;

and in some analogous change appears to consist the secret of this dish.

The fact that the tray was sufficiently full, was notified to me by a

smart nudge of the elbow. It was then brought upon an even keel, and

she dashed away amongst it with both hands in a fine style: it was then

thrown into a sieve of pierced sheepskin; and, shaken and tossed, the

smaller grains passed through below, the larger were brushed away from

the top: the size, which varies, was, in this case, about that of a

large pin’s head. The operation was now completed, and it came forth a

grain reconstructed from the flour by a process which rendered it fit

for food, without fermentation, and almost without firing. From the

sieve it is turned into a conical basket of palmetto leaves and placed

on the top of one of the long-necked jars boiling on the fire. In a

quarter of an hour it is cooked, or rather heated. It is curious to

find steam employed, in probably the most ancient of made-dishes.

In this simple form, or with buttermilk, kuscoussoo constitutes the

common food of the people. Fowls or meat, when used, are stewed in the

pot over which it is steamed: the gravy is poured over it, and the meat

or fowl perched on the top. In these cases, it is turned of course out

of the basket into an earthen dish. Gideon in his cookery used a basket

and a dish.

A still more remarkable operation is that of eating it. The Moor gets

his kuscoussoo into his mouth without the aid of a spoon; yet neither

does he drop it, nor does he poke in the plate to catch greasy grains,

nor smear one hair of his moustache. He beats the chopsticks with the

knowing jerk of the South Sea islanders. A monkey only spills his

kuscoussoo. With the points of the fingers of the right hand a portion

of the grains is drawn towards the side of the dish. It is fingered as

the keys of a pianoforte till it gathers together; it is then taken up

into the hand, shaken, pressed till it adheres, moulded till it becomes

a ball; tossed up and worked till it is perfect, and then shot by the

thumb, like a marble, into the open mouth.[258] Eaten otherwise it is

no longer kuscoussoo, and the spoon-feeding Frank may live upon it for

twenty years, and never know what it is that he is eating.[259]

Dr. Shaw, who lived so long at Algiers and travelled all over Barbary,

has remarked--but not accurately--these peculiarities. He calls

the ball _Hamsa_, mistaking cause for effect. The name of the ball

is _cora_. Hamsa is a slang term for hand, corresponding with our

word _fives_, and its dexterity being peculiarly exhibited in this

operation, they may have jocularly answered his questions about it with

that word.

Marmol, a Christian captive, entertains great respect for kuscoussoo,

but Leo Africanus, a Moor of Grenada, a Mussulman and Prince of the

Land, thus reviles it. “In winter they have sodden flesh with a kind of

meat called Cuscusu, which being made of a lump of dough, is set upon

the fire in certain vessels full of holes, and afterwards is tempered

with butter and pottage. The said cuscusu is set before them all in

one platter only, whereon gentlemen as well as others take it not with

spoons, but with their claws five (Hamsa.) The meat and pottage is put

all in one dish, out of which every one raketh with his greasy fists

what he thinks good. You shall never see knife upon the table, but they

tear and greedily devour their meat like hungry dogs. Neither doth any

of them desire to drink before he hath well stuffed his paunch: another

will sup of a cup of cold water as big as a milk bowl.”

M. Roche, who had the advantage of Leo by a double apostacy, used his

proficiency in the opposite sense, and won the day in his late _coup

de main_, by his dexterity in making and projecting coras. Kuscoussoo

with other food was put upon a table for him; knives, forks, and

spoons were laid out; but he seized the kuskas or kuscoussoo dish,

squatted down with it on the floor, and turned up the sleeve of his

uniform, observing, “This is the way we eat kuscoussoo.” That other

extraordinary adventurer, Ali Bey, who was sent by the Prince of

Peace with the scheme of revolutionizing Morocco, until the Spanish

forces should be ready to land to take possession of it, was equally

expert--in fact, it was a _sine quâ non_ of admission into society.

Vermicelli and macaroni are derived from kuscoussoo. They are both

in use in Morocco. Vermicelli is simply the grains of the kuscoussoo

rolled long; it is then called _spauria_. The macaroni is served as a

long roll, coiled like a rope, on a large plate. It is called Fidaoush.

The Spanish name for macaroni is _fidaos_, _Fideh_, the Greek φιδή.

But the Moors are not ignorant of the art of making bread. On the

contrary, they abound in varieties, and have particular kinds for

particular seasons. The Spaniards have evidently derived from them

their manner of baking, in which the dough is most severely handled,

and then, but very slightly, raised or baked. Their bread is something

between biscuit and bread: those who have not eaten it in Andalusia,

and particularly at Seville, do not know what bread is.