MECHINEZ.
After twenty-four days of city life the caravan impressed me as a new
spectacle. And yet nothing was changed, except that beside Mohamed
Ducali rode the Moor, Schellal, who although his business had been
amicably settled, thought it more prudent to return to Tangiers under
the wing of the Ambassador than to remain in Fez under that of his
government. An acute observer might also have observed upon our faces,
if he were a pessimist, a certain annoyance; if an optimist, a calm
serenity, which was derived from a profound consciousness in all, that
we had left behind in the imperial capital no pining beauty, no offended
husband, no distracted family. On all our faces also shone the thought
of return—that is, on as much as could be seen of them under the
umbrellas, veils, handkerchiefs, with which most of us had concealed our
heads for shelter against the ardent sun and suffocating dust. Alas!
here was the great change. The sun of May was changed into the sun of
June, the thermometer marked forty-two degrees (centigrade) at the
moment of departure, and before us lay two hundred miles of African
soil.
To return to Tangiers we had to go to Mechinez, from thence to Laracce,
then along the shores of the sea to Arzilla, and from Arzilla to
Ain-Dalia, where we had first encamped.
We took three days to go to Mechinez, distant from Fez about fifty
kilometres.
The country did not present any marked differences to that which we had
traversed in going to Fez: always the same fields of grain and barley,
in some of which they were beginning to reap; the same black _duars_,
the same vast spaces covered with dwarf palms and lentiscus, those grand
undulations of the land, rocky hills, dry beds of torrents, solitary
palms, white tombs of saints, splendidly peaceful and infinitely sad.
But because of the neighborhood of the two great cities, we met more
people than on the way between Tangiers and Fez: caravans of camels,
droves of cattle, merchants bringing troops of beautiful horses to the
markets of Fez, saints preaching in the desert, couriers on foot and on
horseback, groups of Arabs armed with reaping-hooks, and some rich
Moorish families going to Fez with their servants and chattels. One of
these—the family of a wealthy merchant known to Ducali—formed a long
caravan. First came two servants armed with muskets; and behind them the
head of the family, a handsome man of a stern countenance, with a black
beard and a white turban, riding a richly caparisoned mule; with one
hand he held the reins, and sustained a child of two or three years old,
seated before him in the saddle; with the other he clasped the hand of a
woman completely veiled—perhaps his favorite wife—who rode behind him
astride of the mule’s crupper, and who held him round the waist as if
she meant to suffocate him, perhaps in fear of us. Other women, all with
veiled faces, came riding on other mules behind the master; armed
relations, boys, black servants; women with babies in their arms; Arab
servants with muskets on their shoulders; mules and asses laden with
mattresses, pillows, coverings, plates, and other matters; and, finally,
more servants on foot, bearing cages full of canary-birds and parrots.
The women, as they passed us, wrapped their veils more closely about
them, the merchant did not look at us, the relations gave us a timid
glance, and two of the children began to cry.
From these spectacles we were diverted on the third day by a sad event.
Poor Doctor Miguerez, attacked at our second resting-place by the
atrocious pain of sciatica, had to be transported to Mechinez in a
litter, hastily made of a hammock and two curtain-poles, and suspended
between two mules; and this depressed us all. The caravan was divided
into two parts. I cannot express how painful it became to see, as we
often did, that litter appear behind us on the top of a hill and slowly
descend into the valley, surrounded by soldiers on horseback, muleteers,
servants, and friends, all grave and silent as a funeral cortége, and
now and then stopping to bend over the sick man, and then going on,
signing to us from afar that our poor friend was growing worse. It was a
painful spectacle, but a fine one also, giving to the caravan the air of
the afflicted escort of a wounded sultan.
On the first day we encamped still in the plain of Fez; on the second,
on the right bank of the Mduma River, at about five hours from Mechinez.
Here we had a very pleasant adventure. Toward evening we all went down
to the bank of the river, about half a mile from the camp, near a large
_duar_, from which all the inhabitants came out to meet us. There was a
bridge there of masonry; one single arch, of Arab construction, and old,
but still entire and solid; and beside it the remains of another bridge,
partly embedded in the high rocky bank, and partly fallen into the bed
of the river. On the opposite shore, at about fifty paces from the
bridge, there was a dilapidated wall, some traces of foundations, and a
few big hewn stones that seemed to have once belonged to an important
building. The country all about was deserted. The ruins, we were told,
were those of an Arabian city, called Mduma, built upon the remains of
another city anterior to the Mussulman invasion. We set to work to
search among the stones for any traces of Roman construction; but we
found or recognized none, to the manifest satisfaction of the Arabs, who
doubtless believed that we were seeking, on the faith of some of our
diabolical books, some hidden treasures of the _Rumli_ (Romans), from
whom, according to them, all Christians are direct descendants.
Captain de Boccard, however, recrossing the bridge to return to the
camp, saw down in the river, on the top of an enormous fragment of
almost pyramidal form, some small square stones, which looked to him as
if they had characters engraved upon them; and the fact that they were
there, as if placed there on purpose to be seen from the bridge, made
the supposition of value. The Captain manifested his intention of going
to see what they were. Everybody advised him not to. The river banks
were very steep, the bottom encumbered with pointed rocks, scattered at
some distance from each other, the current strong and rapid, the
fragment of ruin on which the stones lay was very high, and either
impossible or very dangerous of access. But Captain de Boccard is one of
those persons who are impossible to move when once their purpose is
fixed: they will do it, or die. We had not yet done dissuading him, when
he was already down the bank, just as he was, with his horseman’s boots
and spurs. A hundred Arabs were looking on, some fringed along the river
banks, some leaning over the parapet of the bridge. As soon as they
understood what the Captain was going to do, the enterprise appeared to
them so desperate, that they began to laugh. When they saw him stop on
the edge of the water and look about as if seeking a passage, they
imagined that his courage had failed, and all burst out into insolently
sonorous laughter. “Not one of us,” one cried, in a loud voice, “has
ever succeeded in climbing up there; we shall see whether a Nazarene can
do it.”
And certainly no other of us Italians could have done it. But he who
attempted it was, as it happened, the most active personage in the
Embassy. The laughter of the Arabs gave him the final impulse. He gave a
spring, disappeared into the midst of the bushes, reappeared upon a
rock, vanished again, and so from rock to rock, springing like a cat,
clinging, and climbing, and slipping, over and over again risking a fall
into the river, or the breaking of his bones, came to the foot of the
piece of ruin, and without taking breath, clinging to every root and
every projection, he reached the top, and stood erect upon it like a
statue. We all drew a long breath, the Arabs were amazed, and Italian
honor was safe. The Captain, like a noble victor, deigned not even a
glance at his crestfallen adversaries, and as soon as he had satisfied
himself that the supposed engraved stones were nothing but fragments of
mortar that had fallen from the bridge, came down by the other side, and
with a few jumps gained the shore, where he was received with the honors
of a triumph.
The transit from Mduma to Mechinez was a succession of optical illusions
of so singular a character, that if it had not been for the suffocating
heat, we should have been immensely amused by them. At about two hours
from the encampment, we saw, vaguely gleaming afar off in a vast naked
plain, the white minarets of Mechinez, and rejoiced that we were so near
our journey’s end. But what had seemed to us a plain was in reality an
interminable succession of parallel valleys, separated by large waves of
land all of equal height, which presented the aspect of one continued
surface; so that as we went forward the city was perpetually hidden and
again revealed, as if it were peeping at us; and besides that, the
valleys being broken, rocky, and traversed only by winding and difficult
paths, our road yet to be accomplished was at least double in distance
to what it appeared to be; and it seemed as if the city withdrew as we
advanced; at every valley our hearts opened to hope, and at every hill
we despaired again, and voices weak and high were heard, and lamentable
sighs, and angry propositions to renounce any future voyage to Africa,
for whatever purpose or under whatever conditions; when suddenly, as we
came out of a grove of wild olives, the city rose before us, and all our
lamentations were lost in exclamations of wonder.
Mechinez, spread upon a long hill, surrounded by gardens, bounded by
three ranges of battlemented walls, crowned with minarets and palms, gay
and majestic, like a suburb of Constantinople, presented herself to our
eyes, with her thousand terraces drawn white against the azure of the
sky. Not a cloud of smoke issued from all that multitude of houses;
there was not a living soul to be seen, either on the terraces or before
the walls; nor was there a sound to be heard: it seemed a deserted city,
or a scene in a theatre.
The dinner tent was pitched in a bare field, at two hundred paces from
one of the fifteen gates of the city, and in a few minutes we sat down
to satisfy, as some elegant prose writer remarks, “our natural talent
for food and drink.”
We were scarcely seated, when there issued from the city gate, and
advanced toward the encampment, a company of horsemen superbly dressed
and preceded by foot-soldiers.
It was the governor of Mechinez, with his relatives and officials. At
about twenty paces off they dismounted from their horses, which were
covered with trappings in all the colors of the rainbow, and rushed
toward us shouting all together in one voice, “Welcome! welcome!
welcome!”
[Illustration: Gateway At Mechinez.]
The governor was a young man of a mild countenance, with black eyes and
blacker beard; all the others, men of forty or fifty, were tall,
bearded, dressed in white, and as neat and perfumed as if they had come
out of a box. They all pressed our hands, passing round the table with a
tripping step, and smiling graciously, and then took their places behind
the governor. One of them, seeing a bit of bread on the ground, picked
it up and put it on the table, saying something which probably meant:
“Excuse me; the Koran forbids the wasting of bread; I am doing my duty
as a good Mussulman.” The governor offered us the hospitality of his
house, which was accepted. Only the two artists and I remained in the
camp, and waited until it should be cool before going into the city.
Selam kept us company, and related to us the wonders of Mechinez.
“At Mechinez are the most beautiful women in Morocco, the finest gardens
in Africa, and the most beautiful imperial palace in the world.” Thus he
began; and in fact Mechinez does enjoy such fame in the empire. To be a
native of Mechinez is, for a woman, to be beautiful, and for a man, to
be jealous. The imperial palace, founded by Muley-Imael, which in 1703
had in it four thousand women and eight hundred and sixty-seven
children, had an extent of two miles of circuit, and was ornamented with
marble columns, brought partly from the ruins of the city of Pharaoh,
near Mechinez, and partly from Leghorn and Marseilles. There was a great
hall, or alkazar, where the most precious European tissues were sold; a
vast market, joined to the city by a road ornamented with a hundred
fountains; a park of immense olive-trees; seven large mosques; a
formidable garrison with artillery, that held the Berbers of the
mountains in check; an imperial treasure of five hundred millions of
francs; and a population of fifty thousand inhabitants, who were
considered as the most cultured and the most hospitable in the empire.
Selam described in a low voice and with mysterious gestures the place
where the treasure was kept, the amount of which no one knows; but it
must have been much decreased in the last wars, if even it is still
worthy of the name of treasure. “Within the palace,” he said, “there is
another palace all of stone, which receives the light from above, and is
surrounded by three ranges of walls. It is entered by an iron door, and
within there is another, and yet another iron door. After these three
doors there is a dark, low passage, where lights are necessary, and the
pavement, walls, and roof are all of black marble, and the air smells
like that of a sepulchre. At the end of the corridor, there is a great
hall, and in the middle of it an opening which leads to a deep
subterranean place, where three hundred negroes, four times a year,
shovel in the gold and silver money which the Sultan sends. The Sultan
looks on while this is done. The negroes are shut up for life in the
palace, and never come out until they are carried out dead. And around
the great hall there are ten earthen jars which contain the heads of ten
slaves who once tried to steal. Muley Soliman cut off all their heads as
soon as the money was in its place. And no man ever came out of that
palace alive except our lord the Sultan.”
He related these horrors without the least sign of disapproval, even
with an admiring accent, as if they were superhuman and fatal events,
which a man must not judge, nor feel any other sentiment concerning them
save one of mysterious respect.
“There was once a king of Mechinez,” he resumed, with unalterable
gravity, standing erect before our tent, with his hand on the hilt of
his sabre, “who wished to make a road from Mechinez to Morocco, bordered
by two high walls, so that even the blind could go from one place to the
other without a guide. And this perverse and cruel king had a ring by
whose power he could call all the demons to his service. And he called
them and made them work at the road. There were thousands and thousands
of them, and every one of them carried stones that a hundred men could
not have moved an inch, and those who would not work, the king had them
built up alive in the wall, and their bones can still be seen.” (They
can still be seen, indeed, but they are the bones of Christian slaves,
which are also found in the walls of Sallè and Rabat.)
“And the wall was built for the length of a day’s journey, and everybody
rejoiced, thinking that it would soon be finished. But that king was
displeasing to Allah, and Allah did not choose that the wall should be
finished. One day when he was riding along, a poor country-woman stopped
him, and said, 'Where, O audacious king, is this road to end?’ 'In
hell,’ answered the king, in a rage. 'Go down there, then!’ cried the
woman. At these words the king fell from his horse dead, the walls
crumbled away, the demons scattered the stones over the country, and the
road remains to this day unfinished forever.”
“And do you believe that all this is true, Selam?” I asked.
“Certainly,” he answered, astonished at my doubt.
“Do you believe in demons?”
“Of course I believe in them! I should like to see the time when we
would not believe in them!”
“But have you ever seen one?”
“Never! And for that reason I believe that there are no more of them on
earth, and when I hear any one say, 'Take care how you pass at night
through such or such a place, because there are demons there,’ I go at
once, and go in first myself, because I know that the demons are men,
and with a good horse between my knees, and a good musket in my hand, I
am afraid of nobody.”
“And why, in your opinion, are there no more demons now, if there were
some once?”
“Why, because the world was not always the same as it is now. I might as
well ask you why men were once taller, and the days longer than they are
now, and why beasts could talk.” And he went off shaking his head with a
compassionate air.
[Illustration: Palace Of The Governor Of Mechinez.]
On that day, as the Ambassador was dining in the city, Selam and the
others did nothing but gallop between the town and the tents, to the
great amusement of the artists and myself, because the contrast between
the majesty of their aspect and the humility of their office had never
struck us before. There, for instance, was Hamed, mounted on a superb
black horse, coming out at a gallop from the battlemented gate of
Mechinez, and darting off at full speed across the country. His tall
turban gleamed in the sun with the whiteness of snow; his large blue
mantle floated on the wind like a royal garment; his poniard glittered;
the whole of his martial and gracious figure presented the dignity of a
prince and the boldness of a warrior. What romantic fancies are excited
in the mind by the vision of that handsome Mussulman cavalier flying
like a phantom under the walls of a mediæval city! Whither goes he? To
carry off the loveliest daughter of the Pashà of Faraone; to defy the
valorous Caid of Uazzan, betrothed to the lady of his love; to pour out
his griefs into the bosom of the aged saint who has prayed for eighty
years on the top of Mount Zerhun, in the sacred _zania_ of Muley-Edris?
Nothing of the sort; he is coming back to camp to get a plate of fried
potatoes for the Ambassador.
Toward sunset the two painters and myself, mounted on mules, and
escorted by four foot-soldiers of the governor of Mechinez, set out for
the city, our guard having put away their muskets, and being armed only
with sticks and knotted cords. Before starting, however, we arranged
with them, through interpreter Hamed, that whenever we all should clap
our hands thrice, in whatever quarter of the city we might be, they were
to conduct us at once back to the encampment.
Passing two outside gates, divided by a steep ascent, we found ourselves
in the centre of the city. The first impression was one of agreeable
surprise. Mechinez, which we had fancied as more melancholy than Fez,
was, on the contrary, a gay city, full of verdure, traversed by many
winding streets, but broad, and bordered by low houses and garden walls
that allowed the tops of the beautiful hills around to be seen. On every
side there rose above the houses a minaret, a palm, a battlemented wall;
at every step a fountain or an arabesqued door appeared; there were oaks
and leafy fig-trees in the streets and squares, and everywhere air, and
light, and the odor of the fields, and a certain gentle peacefulness, as
of a princely city, fallen, but not dead. After many turns, we came out
in a vast square, opposite the monumental palace of the governor,
resplendent with many-colored mosaics of great beauty; and, at that
moment, the level rays of the setting sun striking full upon it, it
glittered like the pearl-encrusted palaces of the Oriental legends. A
few soldiers were going through the powder-play (_guioco della
polvere_); about fifty servants and guards were sitting on the ground
before the door; the piazza was deserted. It was a fine spectacle. That
illuminated façade, those horsemen, the towers, the solitude, and the
sunset formed altogether a picture so completely Moorish, breathed so
vivid an air of other times, presented in one frame so many stories, so
much poetry, so many dreams, that we stood rapt before it. From thence
the soldiers led us to see a great exterior gate of noble design,
covered from top to bottom with delicate and many-colored mosaics, which
glowed in the sun like jewels set in ivory; and the painters sketched it
in all haste before we returned to the city. Until now, the people we
met by the way had shown themselves only curious, and it seemed to us
that they even regarded us with more benevolent eyes than the population
of Fez. But suddenly, without a shadow of reason, their humor changed.
Some old women began to show us the whites of their eyes, then some boys
threw stones at our mules’ legs, and then a troop of ragamuffins began
to run beside us and behind us, making the most infernal noise. The
soldiers, meantime, were in no humor for compliments. Two placed
themselves in front and two behind us, and they began a real combat with
the rabble, striking the nearest with their sticks, throwing stones at
those far away, and chasing the most insolent. But it was all labor
thrown away. Not daring to retort with stones, the rabble began to throw
rotten oranges, bits of lemon-peel, dry sticks, and the shower became so
heavy, that it seemed to us more prudent to advise the soldiers to
desist from further provocation. But the soldiers were provoked, and
either did not or would not hear us, and continued the battle with
increasing fury. Indignant at their brutality, we warned them with
imperative gestures to desist. But the wretches thought we were
reproving them for too much mildness, and went on worse than ever. By
way of addition, two boys of ten and twelve years old now joined
us—possibly relations of the soldiers—and armed with sticks; they too
began to distribute the most desperate blows to men, women, asses,
mules, near and far, until even the soldiers themselves counselled
moderation. And at every blow they turned and looked at us, as if to ask
us to take note of their zeal in our defence; and as we were in fits of
laughter, they were encouraged and went on worse than ever. Now what
will happen? we said to each other. A scandal! A revolution! Already the
beaten ones grumbled, and some raised their hands against the boys; we
must get out of the city as soon as may be. But Biseo still hesitated,
when a stone struck my mule on the head, and a carrot alighted on the
back of Ussi’s neck. Then we decided to clap our hands as agreed upon.
But even this innocent signal provoked a tumult. The soldiers, to show
that they understood, responded by clapping their own hands; the people
in the square, thinking that they were being made game of, clapped
theirs, and the oranges and lemons continued to rain upon us, together
with curses loud and deep; and when at last we reached the gate, and
rode down toward the camp, they still yelled after us from the walls:
“Accursed be thy father! May thy race be exterminated! May God roast thy
great-grandfather!”
Thus did Mechinez receive us, and fortunate for us it was that she is
the “most hospitable city in the empire.”
On the following morning there was brought to the camp a litter for the
doctor, made in twenty-four hours by the best carpenters in Mechinez,
who would certainly have taken twenty-four days in its construction, if
the governor had not used certain arguments to which there was great
risk in being deaf. It was a heavy and badly made machine, which looked
more like a cage for the transportation of wild beasts than a litter for
a sick man; much better made, however, than any thing we could contrive;
and the workmen who completed it under our eyes were so proud of it, and
so sure of our admiration, that they trembled with emotion at their
work, and at every word from us sent flashes from their eyes. When
Morteo put the money in their hands they thanked him gravely, and went
away with a triumphant smile, which meant—“Ignorant proud ones, we have
let you see what we can do!”
Toward evening we left Mechinez, and travelled for two hours over the
loveliest country that was ever seen in his dreams by an enamored
painter. I see, I feel still the divine grace of those verdant hills,
sprinkled with rose-trees, myrtles, oleanders, flowering aloes; the
splendor of that city gilded by the sun, hiding from our sight minaret
by minaret, palm-tree by palm-tree, terrace by terrace, and the air
impregnated with inebriating perfume, and the waters reflecting the
thousand colors of the escort, and the infinite melancholy of that rosy
sky. I still see and feel all this, and know not how to describe it.