The other danger-point in Morocco is the Sus, a “forbidden” and unknown country through which only a handful of European travellers have ever passed, all in disguise and all in peril of their lives. The Sus is the rich and fertile valley lying between the Great Atlas and the Anti Atlas, and touching the Atlantic coast at Agadir. It is said to be thickly populated; it is believed to contain rich mines; it is fanatical to the last degree. Its Berber inhabitants, who are separated from the Arabs of the surrounding regions by a totally distinct language known as the Tamazight, or Tongue of the Free, though acknowledging the religious supremacy of the reigning Sultan, have always maintained a semi-independence, having never submitted to Moorish rule nor paid tax nor tribute to the government of Morocco. Twice within the last three or four decades Moorish Sultans have invaded and attempted to conquer the Sus, but each time they have been driven back across the Atlas. The origin of the people of this region is lost in the mists of antiquity. According to the Koran its original inhabitants were natives of Syria, where they proved themselves such undesirable citizens that King David ordered them to be tied up in sacks and carried out of the country on camels, since he wished to see their faces no more. Arrived in the vicinity of the Atlas Mountains, the leader of the caravan called out in the Berber tongue “Sus!” which means “Let down! Empty out!” So the exiled undesirables were dumped unceremoniously out of their sacks, and the country in which they found themselves, and where they settled, is called the Sus to this day. The people of the Sus have never liked the French, and there is little doubt that they will oppose any attempt to treat them as a province of Morocco, and consequently subject to French control. It is obvious that France will sooner or later be obliged to send an expedition into the Sus for the purpose of asserting her power as well as to counteract the German influence which is rapidly gaining ground there, for the Sus, remember, is the region where Germany's interests in Morocco are centred and provided the excuse for sending her gun-boat to Agadir and almost provoking a European war thereby. Germany still retains her commercial interests in the Sus Valley, and France will be obliged to step gingerly indeed if she wishes to avoid stirring up still another affaire Marocaine.
If France accomplishes nothing more in Morocco than the extermination of the slave trade she will have performed a genuine service to humanity. Though slavery has been abolished in every other quarter of Africa, no attempt has ever been made by the European powers to put a check upon the practice in Morocco. Something over three thousand slaves, it is estimated, are imported into Morocco every year, most of them being brought by the terrible desert routes from Equatoria and the Sudan, the trails of the slave caravans being marked by the bleaching bones of the thousands who have died on the way from heat, hunger, or exhaustion. Many smug-faced people will assure you that slavery has been wiped out in Africa—praise be to the Lord!—but I can take you into half a dozen Moroccan cities and show you slaves being auctioned to the highest bidder as openly as they were in our own South fifty years ago. There is a large and profitable demand for slaves, particularly girls and boys, in all of the Moroccan cities, a young negress having a market value of anywhere from eighty dollars to one hundred and twenty dollars. Although, as I have already remarked, the bulk of the slaves are driven across the Sahara by the time-honoured method, exceptionally pretty girls are often brought from West African ports in French vessels as passengers and disposed of to wealthy Moors by private sale. So great is the demand for young and attractive women that girls are occasionally stolen from Moorish villages, the slave-dealer laying a trail of sweets, of which the native women are inordinately fond, from the outskirts of the villages up to neighbouring clumps of trees, behind which he conceals himself, pouncing out upon his unsuspecting victims as they approach. If France succeeds in stamping out the slave trade in Morocco as effectually as she has in her other African possessions, she will prove herself, as our missionary friends would put it, the flail of the Lord.
Of all France's ambitious projects for the exploitation of North Africa in general, and the opening up of Morocco in particular, the one which most appeals to the imagination, and which, when executed, is likely to be of the greatest benefit to the world, is her astounding scheme for bringing South America a week nearer to Europe by means of a railway from Tangier, in Morocco, to Dakar, in Senegal. The route, as at present planned, would run from Tangier, via Fez, to Tuat. From Tuat the Sahara would be crossed and the Niger gained at Timbuktu. Though about three hundred miles of this section would lie through the most hopeless desert country, it presents no great obstacle to engineers, the Sudanese line from Wady Halfa to Khartoum proving how easily the difficulties of desert construction and lack of water can be overcome. The third section would be from Timbuktu to Dakar, where the French within the last few years have created a magnificent naval port and commercial harbour. Already Timbuktu and Dakar are in regular communication by a mixed steamer and railway service, the journey taking, when the Senegal is in flood, but five days. As such a system would have, of necessity, to be independent of the Niger and Senegal river services, which are not always reliable, a line is now under construction which will bring Timbuktu into direct rail communication with Dakar, thus eliminating the difficulties and uncertainties of river navigation. From Dakar to Pernambuco, in Brazil, is less than fifteen hundred miles, which could be covered by a fast steamer in three days. There are already regular sailings between these ports, but with the completion of this trans-African system (and, believe me, it is far from being as chimerical as it sounds, for the French do not let the grass grow under their feet when they once get a clear right of way for railway-building) ocean greyhounds will be placed in service between Dakar and the South American ports, it being estimated that the traveller who purchases his ticket via Madrid, Gibraltar, and then over the Moroccan-Saharan system, can journey from Paris to Rio de Janeiro in twelve days. It is obvious that in some such scheme as this lies the future of the French Sahara, as well as the enormously increased prosperity of the Moroccan hinterland and of the Niger-Senegal possessions, for it was just such a transcontinental line, remember, which brought population and prosperity to the desert regions of our own West.
It is no light task to which France has pledged herself in agreeing to effect the regeneration of an empire so decrepit and decadent as Morocco, but that she will accomplish it is as certain as that the leaves come with the spring. The changes which the coming of the French will effect in Morocco stretch the imagination almost to the breaking-point. Already the wireless crackles and splutters from a mast erected over the French Residency in Fez. With the proclamation of the protectorate the waiting railway-builders jumped their rail-heads across the Moroccan border as homesteaders, hearing the signal gun, jump their horses over the border of newly opened lands. Two or three years more and the traveller will be able to purchase through tickets to Fez and Marrakesh as easily as he can now to San Francisco or Milan. At Tangier, Rabat, El Araish, Mogador, and Agadir harbours will be dredged, break-waters built, and wharves constructed, while the filthy, foul-smelling cities will be made as clean and sanitary as Tunis and Algiers. Under French control Tangier, with its ideal climate, its picturesque features, and its splendid situation, will rival Cairo and the Riviera as a fashionable winter resort. The Moorish peasantry will be permitted to till their farms in peace, undisturbed by devastating armies, while the warlike Riffs can have their fill of fighting in French uniforms and under the French flag. This is no empty vision, remember. Peace, progress, and prosperity are bound to come to Morocco, just as they have come to those other African regions upon which the Frenchman has set his hand. Just how soon they come depends largely upon the Moors themselves.
CHAPTER III
SIRENS OF THE SANDS
ZORAH-BEN-ABDALLAH was a perilously pretty girl, judged by any standard that you please. She was unveiled—a strange thing for an Eastern woman—and the clearness of her café-au-lait complexion was emphasised by carmine lips and by blue-black hair, bewilderingly becoiffed and bewitchingly bejewelled; her eyes Scherazade would have envied. She was leaning from the window of a second-class compartment in the ramshackle train which plies between Constantine and Biskra and was quite openly admiring the very tight light-blue tunic and the very loose scarlet riding-breeches of my companion, a young officer of chasseurs d'Afrique who was rejoining his regiment at El-Kantara.