To thread one’s way through a narrow gap from the outer Ocean into a basin spread between Asia, Africa, and Europe, is an occasion which even books of geography cannot render wholly uninteresting and common-place.
This sea has, at each extremity, a narrow entrance; through both the water rushes in: each forms the point of junction of two quarters of the globe,—Europe there meeting Asia—here, Africa. The first is acknowledged to be the most important position of the globe. The land and sea there reciprocally command each other. A capital, an emporium, and a fortress, combined in one, are placed at the meeting of two continents and two seas, “like a diamond,” to use the words of a Turkish annalist, “between two emeralds and two sapphires, the master-stone in the ring of empire.”
Had the western entrance received the slightest pressure at its formation, had one of the hills since slipped down into its channel, the Gut of Gibraltar would not be the Ring on the finger, but the rod of Empire in the hand of whoever possessed it. Happily, however, no guns can cross, and no batteries command, the passage through which flows the commerce of the world, and, at times, the food of nations.
Both banks of the Bosphorus are under the same dominion, and inhabited by the same people. The channel bisects an Empire and traverses a Capital. Two people, so dissimilar, occupy here the opposite shores, that they might belong to different planets. No fishing-boat ventures across, and if so driven, they take care if they can to anchor beyond musket-shot. As to neighbourhood, the whole Atlantic might as well roll between them. As to intercourse, they might as well belong to distinct orders of creation. They hold each other like to those unsightly and malignant monsters to which ancient mythology consigned the western portions of the world. If intercourse is rendered necessary, there is a preliminary parley and a flag of truce, and even the ceremonial of a friendly meeting records the accomplishment of Dido’s prophecy and curse.
Yet this is no forbidding land. There are neither sands nor precipices. There are neither rudeness and asperity, nor barrenness and waste. There are lowly vales and verdant plains, as well as gigantic mountains. This great, this beautiful country—this corner of a mighty continent—almost touches Europe. One-half of our whole trade passes along it; yet it is sealed against us more effectually than China or Japan.
European enterprize, by lust of conquest, love of gain, or spirit of proselytism, has made the wide world its vineyard; and, combining its various engines, has, far and near, shattered thrones, and subjugated or extinguished races. How is it that Morocco stands unmoved and unassailed?
All the nations which formed part of the Roman Empire, and have become Mussulmans, have fallen under the sway of Constantinople, Morocco alone excepted. All the barbarous States, which have attracted the cupidity of Europeans, have fallen under their sway, Morocco alone excepted. But the breakers of her shores, the sands of her deserts, the valour of her sons, the wildness of her tribes, have not alone done this. Threatened now by a new enemy and a new danger, the past is worth sifting, in order to anticipate whether or not she will hold her own; or if she fall, whether she will rot away, or sink brightly and bravely, preserving
Genio y figura
Hasta la sepultura.
It is an old story, and we have forgotten it, that on Morocco our first and greatest essays of conquest were made. England expended upon the fortification of Tangier more than all she ever advanced for the conquest of India. Portugal and Spain, who had found it necessary to separate, by half the globe, their other enterprizes, here combined, and expended more lives, ships, and treasure in their fruitless attempts than in the subjugation of the East Indies and the West. Neighbourhood, political hatred, religious animosity, combined with the prospects of dominion, and the hope of obtaining supplies of the precious metals, to urge them to make and continue these attempts. Elsewhere, by their wonderful successes, unknown adventurers—a Cortez, a Pizzaro, and an Albukerque—were converted into heroes. Here Princes of the State and Church, Kings and Emperors, were the leaders—to experience only failure and disgrace. Elsewhere handfuls of men conquered myriads. Here mighty armaments have been annihilated by despised foes. Elsewhere a native power had to do with but one European assailant. Morocco numbered amongst her assailants every European power. She holds the bones of English peers, of Turkish beys, of Portuguese princes, Andalusian kings. She has foiled an Emperor of Austria, and discomfited in succession the warlike operations, or the political plans of Cardinal Ximenes, of Philip II., Don Sebastian, and Barbarossa. Spain has some fortified points upon the coast, but they are blockaded; and this smothered warfare is a living record of our aggressions, and her delivery.
That event is one of the most remarkable of revolutions.[1] The Spaniards were in possession of all the north country. The Portuguese had extended themselves along the whole of the seaboard of the west, down as far as Suz. The native troops in their pay at one time exceeded 100,000. The four kingdoms of which Morocco is now constituted, were then distinct, and the various courts rivalled each other in pusillanimity and corruption, exhibiting every symptom of dissolution, from the disorders within and the power that threatened from abroad. It was then that a family of mendicants and fanatics issued like lions from the desert, upset the ruling dynasties, re-kindled the flame of patriotism, rallied the sinking people, drove forth the invaders, constructed a common Empire out of these divided States, and placed their Dynasty upon the throne, which it occupies to this day.