From that time only have Europe and Africa become strangers to each other; and so Morocco has maintained the independence so strangely won.
What renders this non-intercourse surprising is neighbourhood; yet that is its explanation. Here Europeans could not be taken for Children of the Sun, nor supposed to be quiet traders seeking only commerce: the watchfulness of this people was not, as in India, overreached, nor their affections, as in America, surprised.
The men who, in times of difficulty, have made themselves immortal names, have done nothing more than endeavour to arouse their countrymen from false security, or to guard them against mistaken confidence. The Moor is deficient in polite literature and is ignorant of Greek; but he already was in himself what the wisest words of Demosthenes might have taught him to be, and was prepared to do what the loftiest strains of Tyrtæus might have inspired. From the beginning the African has been preyed upon by the other quarters of the globe. His wrongs have been stored up in his retentive breast.[2] Thence that hate which is his life; by it he has anticipated the lessons of wisdom, and by it he is a match for science and power.[3]
Morocco has consequently been in this distinguished from the other countries that surround the Mediterranean—she has not till now furnished to France and England fuel or field for rivalry and contention. Now she is brought again within the vortex of European politics, and identified in interest with Spain by having the same neighbour, and that neighbour the rival of England. We may again see rehearsed on the same arena, the drama of Rome and Carthage.
As I floated down this river, of which the Atlantic is the fountain, and the Mediterranean the sea, remembering the Dardanelles, I felt with Cicero, that he indeed was happy who could visit, on the one hand, the Straits of Pontus, and on the other, those
“Europam Lybiamque rapax ubi dividit unda.”
And that Atlas, sustaining the heavens on his shoulders,[4] no less than Prometheus fixed upon the Caucasus, might convey in fables early and divine truths.
This is a spot which has influenced the destinies and formed the character, not of one but of many people: it is the home of the fleeing Canaanite, the bourne of the wandering Arab; it was the limit of the ancient world. That world of mystery and of poetry, was not like ours. It was not crammed into a Gazetteer, nor were its laws a school-boy lesson learned by rote. These Straits,[5] then the peculiar domain of mythology, were approached with natural wonder and religious awe. The doubtful inquirer came hither to see if the sky met and rested upon the earth—if Atlas did indeed bear a starry burden—to discover what the world was—whether an interminable plain, or a ball launched in space or floating on the water—whether the ocean was a portion of it or supported it—whether beyond the “Pillars”[6] was the origin of present things, or the receptacle of departed ones—whether the road lay to Chaos or to Hades.
And something, too, of these feelings crept over me, even although I came hither merely to ruminate on the past deeds of men, the shadows of which I looked for on the face of that watery mirror, which was the centre of their solid globe—the resolver, the adjuster of all their contests. The Mediterranean has made the world such as it is. Ancient history has been balanced on its bosom; and without the passage connecting it with the ocean, none of the events of recent history could have happened.
To the dwellers on the skirt of Palestine she was a handmaid for a thousand years, affording a liquid way for the wares which they scattered over half the globe: From her bosom rose on all sides those sea-kings of the south, the Pelasgi. She bore the Etruscans to their Ausonian homes. She furnished to the African daughter of Tyre the elements of the power by which she was enabled to compete for the dominion of the world. Transferred by the struggle of a few hours, and by the sinking of a few craft—she carried with her that dominion to Rome, and fixed it there for centuries.