This was the first time I had seen a Mussulman community resident for a period of time in the midst of a Christian people; so that, of course, I was soon engaged in a minute investigation of their social, religious, and domestic habits. Under this scrutiny the Imaum soon began to wince, and the women affected—but very awkwardly—to laugh. The glibness with which they had commenced the conversation had vanished before I suspected the cause,—they took me for a Mussulman in disguise, who had come to pry into the nakedness of the land. They do practise the Abdest. They profess to keep the Ramazan (it is at this moment Ramazan). They have no bath and no mosque; but maintained that the mosque at the Moorish head-quarters, to which they sometimes go, is within the prescribed distance. One native practice they had preserved in its pristine vigour, and that was the kouskouson, with which they presented me, and to which we all did justice. When I had succeeded in convincing them that I was no Mussulman, their hilarity returned, and they were much amused at the description of my surprise at finding in Europe, Christian women muffled up, and meeting in Africa, Mussulman women with naked shoulders.
The Imaum then gave me the detail of a dispute about the neutral ground, which raged at the very moment of the French bombardment of Tangier, and which had been adjusted through the intervention of England—by leaving things exactly where they were! An act of greater insanity there could not be than our interference in any such matter. It is impossible to preserve Gibraltar without the goodwill either of Spain or of Morocco, because our subsistence must be drawn either from the one or the other country. When we are with Spain the Moors are against us; but then we do not need them: when we are against Spain, then we are sure to have the Moors with us.
This is the meaning of Lord Nelson’s words,—“Should Great Britain be at war with any European maritime state, Morocco must be friendly to us, or else we must obtain possession of Tangier.” Lord Nelson did not, however, see that the measure he proposed for obtaining that aid, would have had the opposite effect. If you seized Tangier you would place yourselves in the same position in respect to Morocco that Spain is at Ceuta, and be under a total inability of gaining the means of subsistence either from Morocco or Spain, for Tangier or Gibraltar. This judgment of Lord Nelson, thus reduced to its true application, is of the greatest importance.
The old man was loud in praise of Mr. Hay’s proficiency in Arabic, and he smiled and winked when I said that I could wish nothing better for England than that its servants should be dumb. The Algerine government lately assigned this very reason,—proficiency in the Arabic—for appointing one of their creatures as consul at Tangier: a member of the home government answered that that was the very reason why he was the person least qualified. But Algiers has triumphed over Paris.
The wind seemed settled from the westward, so I determined to return to Gibraltar to catch the steamer from England, and on the following morning bade adieu to this fancy warehouse of guns and convicts—this military toy-shop and Utopian penal settlement.
Just as we were getting into the current, we sprung our gaff, and were fortunately yet near enough to the African shore to regain it. We anchored and repaired the damage out of musket-shot. Had this accident happened an hour afterwards, we should probably not have seen Gibraltar for a week.
As soon as we got put to rights and had the Rock “on again,” three points under our lee-bow, I asked one of the idlers to read something out of Mr. Hay’s “Barbary,” and he commenced with this passage. “And that famous Rock has always been a hotbed for engendering mischievous reports which, if connected in any way with Morocco, are sure to find their way over the Straits and thence to the court at Morocco in an exaggerated and distorted form.”[63]
There is no escape from this Rock, which, like that of the Arabian Nights, is ever attracting and wrecking you. The first thing I heard of at the beginning of this excursion, was the exasperation produced in Spain by the sinking of their cruiser, and the subsequent discussion respecting the rebuilding of the forts of St. Philip and St. Barbara. I had learnt these circumstances through official persons, I was now come to the other side of the water. Here again from an official person, and this time in a published book, breaks out the disgust and irritation engendered in Morocco.
Common fame represents the governor of Gibraltar as having been engaged without measure or disguise, in embroiling the French and the Moors. He and the ambassador from Madrid took the extraordinary step of landing in Morocco at the moment when the appearance of any intermeddling on their part was exactly the thing to drive matters to extremity: they publicly held out encouragement to the Moors. The government at home has declared itself most formally in an opposite sense, and the foreign minister is a man whose word no one ever doubted. The only conclusion, therefore, is that the cabinet is not in the confidence of its agents. It stands to reason that in affairs carried on in secret, the acting hand will be the one which is not seen.
Former governors of this place have managed their own garrison and fort without distracting Spain or Morocco; this governor, then, must have been selected for the work he has performed. The qualifications and antecedents required are those of a soldier. Out of all the army, one only could be selected on whom had been inflicted the penalty of professional disgrace for heading a mob against his sovereign’s troops:—that one was selected. The selection was the subject of astonishment, and it was felt by the service to be an insult. It was indeed inconceivable that a man who had been in his own person guilty of the greatest outrage upon discipline, should have been chosen for the command of the most military garrison in Europe, so as to exhibit to every youth who commences his military career in the garrison,—and every regiment takes its turn,—that mutiny is compatible with the highest honours, and is even the road to preferment. This outrage upon discipline was perpetrated by the head of the British army, and the strictest of disciplinarians.