[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.