A LAST LOOK AT TANGIER
Tangerine hospitality is famous for its freedom, but we have little time for social dissipations. Every moment is occupied in preparations for departure. A few days more and we are to leave this most attractive corner of Cosmopolis, bid farewell to friends, to comfort, and to civilization. The hotel will give place to the tent, the daily pony-canter on the beach to the long weary marches of our caravan over hills and mountains, in the region where there are no roads, where to-day is the same as yesterday. We are to voyage forth upon a strange expanse, where the ship of Moorish civilization, stranded upon the shoals of the religion of immutability, has lain rotting since the conquest of Granada.
It is but right that you should know something about the men upon whom our future comfort, welfare, and safety entirely depend. Let me introduce, first of all, the most faithful of guides, the most honest of dragomans, the cheeriest of companions, the cleverest of pathfinders, the best of cooks, and—the most amusing prevaricator I have ever known. His name is like all Moorish names, a mouthful, "Haj Abd-er-Rahman Salama." We see him first at the door of his dwelling, a bright young Salama at his side. We speak with him in French and Spanish, for his much-advertised command of English is monumentally inadequate. Moreover in French he speaks like a gentleman, in English like a blackguard; one language having been learned in Algiers and in Paris, the other picked up from profane sportsmen, while serving as dragoman for pig-sticking expeditions. As for his name, we forget it altogether, and address him simply as Haj, the word "Haj" being a sort of honorific prefix, meaning Pilgrim, in other words, a righteous Moslem who has made the Holy Pilgrimage to Mecca. When it was noised abroad that we were thinking of a trip to Fez, the professional guides of Tangier looked on us as lawful, tempting prey. One Jewish pathfinder proffered his services and outfit for seven English pounds a day. Then others came with other propositions, and there ensued a veritable rate-war in which tents figure in place of Pullman cars, and, in place of sixty-miles-an-hour locomotives, mules that travel only sixteen miles a day. And Haj triumphed over all competitors, not because he made the lowest bid, but because we saw in him a useful, clever man, full of resource, one of the few Moorish minds able to respond to Anglo-Saxon sympathies. He is one who has bridged the gulf between the Moslem and the Christian races, at the cost, possibly, of his orthodoxy and his hopes of heaven.
THE BEST OF GUIDES,
HAJ ABD-ER-RAHMAN SALAMA
In violent contrast to him in these respects, is our military escort: our fighting-force, assigned us by the government and consisting of one personal unit—with dignity and bigotry and decorative picturesqueness enough for half a regiment. Kaid Lharbi, for such are his title and name, belongs to the Makhazni, or corps of irregular cavalry, the most ornamental branch of the Moorish Sultan's army. No traveler is permitted to go into Morocco unless chaperoned by a Makhazni. Kaid Lharbi will be for us a sort of living passport, his presence at the head of our caravan assuring all persons that we are traveling under the protection of the Moorish government, and that offenses against us will be severely punished. Without this living token of governmental sanction for our expedition, it would be within the power of any local chief to arrest our progress, sending us back in ignominious captivity to Tangier; or, if he preferred, he could rob us with impunity. Kaid Lharbi is therefore a valuable acquisition from the standpoints both of safety and of picturesqueness. He is Moorish in the fullest sense; he thinks such thoughts and dreams such dreams as did his fathers half a thousand years ago. He carries a flintlock made in Tetuan, and is supplied with a lump of lead and a small bullet-mold, that in case of attack he may be able to cast the necessary bullets.
KAID LHARBI, OUR MILITARY ESCORT
The sixth day of May is appointed for the departure of our caravan. It is a memorable day for us, because it marks the close of a long period of doubt and uncertainty as to the possibility of undertaking the expedition, and because it marks the beginning of a new life—the entry into a new world, which is yet immeasurably old. The pack-mules in charge of the three servants have been sent on ahead to await us in the suburbs. Kaid Lharbi, muffled in his blue burnoose, has been stationed like an equestrian statue at the door of the hotel since early morning. Haj, the guide, is here, there, and everywhere, attending to the thousand and one little details and difficulties that always arise at the last moment.