The commandant hung his head with an air of resignation.
Soon after there entered another not less curious personage. He was an Arab from Tangiers, who was in the vice-consul’s service for the time of the journey. His name was Ciua; but his master called him Civo, for greater facility of pronunciation. He was a large and tall young fellow, rather given to practical joking, but good-natured and willing—a big ingenuous boy, who laughed and hid his face when you looked at him. He had no other garment than a long, wide, white shirt, without a girdle, which floated about him when he walked, and gave him a ridiculous resemblance to a cherub. He knew about thirty Spanish words, and with these he managed to make himself understood, when constrained to speak; but he usually preferred to converse in pantomime. To look at him, you would judge him to be about five-and-twenty; but it is easy to make a mistake in an Arab’s age. I asked him how old he was. He covered his face with one hand, thought a moment, and answered, “Cuando guerra España—año y medio.” In the time of the war with Spain, which was in 1860, he was a year and a half old, consequently, he was then seventeen.
The third personage was the ambassador’s cook, who brought us our coffee—an unadulterated Piedmontese from Turin, who had dropped from the clouds one day into Tangiers, and had not yet recovered his wits. The poor man was never tired of exclaiming, “What a country! What a country!”
I asked him if before leaving Turin they had not told him what sort of a place Morocco was. He answered, yes, they had told him, “Take care; Tangiers is not Turin.” And he had thought “Pazienza! it will be like Genoa or Alexandria”; and instead he had found himself in the midst of savages. And they had given him two Arab assistants who could not understand a word he said. And then to make a two months’ journey through the deserts of Egypt! He knew he should never get back alive.
“But at any rate,” I said, “you will have something to tell when you get back to Turin.”
“Ah!” he answered, turning away with an air of profound depression, “what can I tell about a country where one cannot find a single leaf of salad?”
Breakfast over, the ambassador gave the order to break up the encampment. During that long operation, in which not less than one hundred persons were concerned, I noticed a singular trait of Arab character—the insatiable passion for command. There was no need of any indication to recognize at once in that crowd of figures the head muleteer, the head porter, the head tent-servant, the chief of the soldiers of the Legation. Each of these was invested with an authority, and he made it felt and heard, with hand and voice and eye, with or without occasion, and with all the strength of his soul and body. Those who had no authority resorted to all sorts of pretexts for giving orders, and seeming to be something a little above their fellows. The most ragged wretch among them gave himself imperious airs. The simplest operation, such as tying a cord or lifting a box, provoked an exchange of thundering yells, lightning glances, and gestures worthy of an angry sultan. Even Civo, the modest Civo, domineered over two country Arabs who allowed themselves to glance at his master’s trunks from a distance.
At ten in the morning, under a burning sun, the long caravan began slowly to descend into the plain. The Spanish consul and his two companions had been left behind; of foreigners none remained with us now but the American consul and his two sons.
From the place where we had passed the night, called in Arabic Ain-Dalia, which signifies fountain of wine, because of the vines that once were there, we were to go that day to Had-el-Garbia, beyond the mountains that shut in the plain.
For more than an hour we journeyed over a gently undulating plain, among fields of barley and millet, through winding paths, forming at their crossings many little islets of grass and flowers. We met no one, and no figure was visible in the fields. Only once we encountered a long file of camels led by two Bedouin Arabs, who muttered, as they passed, the common salutation: “Peace be on your way.”