The Sebù reminded me of the Tiber in the Roman Campagna. At the point where we struck it, it is about a hundred yards in width, of a muddy color, turbulent and rapid, shut in between two high arid banks, which are almost vertical, and at whose feet extend two zones of miry ground.
Two antediluvian barks, rowed by eight or ten Arabs, approached the shore. These boats alone, if there were nothing else, would suffice to show what Morocco is. For hundreds of years sultans, pashas, caravans, and embassies, have crossed the river on such hulks as these, with their feet in mud and water, sometimes in danger of drowning; and when the hulks—as often happens—are full of holes, caravan and embassy, sultan and pasha, wait on the shore while the boatmen stop the holes with mud or something else, sometimes for several hours in rain or scorching sun; and for hundreds of years horses, mules, and camels, for want of a piece of plank a couple of yards long, run the risk of breaking their legs, and do break them, in jumping from the shore into the boats; and no one has ever conceived the idea of constructing a bridge of boats, and no one has ever thought of bringing down a piece of plank two yards long; and if any one reproves them for these things, they look at him with an air of stupefaction as if he had suggested a prodigy.
In many places they cross the rivers upon rafts made of cane, and their armies cross on floating bridges made of skins blown up with air and covered with earth and branches.
We dismounted, and went down a steep pathway to the river, when we Italians crossed in the first boat, and then looked on from the opposite shore at the passage of the caravan. What a picture it was! In the middle of the river came a great boat filled with the Moors and camels of a caravan of merchandise, and a little beyond, another bringing the horses and men of the escort from Fez, from the midst of which floated the banner of the Prophet, and shone the black visage and snowy turban of the caid. On the opposite shore, in the midst of a great confusion of horses, mules, servants, and baggage, which encumbered the bank for a long distance, appeared the white and gracious figure of the governor Ben-el-Abbassi, seated upon a rising ground, his officers grouped behind him, and his fine horse with its sky-blue trappings standing near. Upon the top of the bank, which rose like the wall of a fortress, and upon which sat a long row of country Arabs with dangling legs, were ranged the two hundred horsemen of the governor, who, seen thus against the blue background of the sky, looked like giants. Some black servants, as naked as they were born, were plunging and re-plunging into the river, screaming and shouting. A few Arabs, according to Moorish custom, washed their rags, bobbing up and down over them like so many puppets; and some crossed the river swimming. Above our heads passed flights of storks; far away on the shore rose the smoke from a group of Bedouin tents; the boatmen chanted in chorus a prayer to the Prophet for the good result of the enterprise; the water sent up golden sparkles in the sun, and Selam, standing at a little distance in his famous caftan, made in the midst of this barbaric and festive picture the most harmonious red point that could be imagined by a painter.
The passage occupied several hours, and as each party reached the shore, it resumed its march with the caravan.
When the last horse had crossed, Governor Ben-el-Abbassi mounted and joined his soldiers in the heights opposite. The ambassador and his suite all raised their hands in salute. The escort of Karia-el-Abbassi answered with a storm of musket-shots, and vanished; but for a moment or two the fine white figure of the governor was visible amid the smoke, with his arm stretched toward us in token of amity and farewell.
Accompanied only by our Fez escort, we now entered upon the sadly famous territory of the Beni-Hassan.
CHAPTER VII.
BENI-HASSAN.
For more than an hour we travelled through fields of barley, from which showed here and there a black tent, the head of a camel, or a cloud of smoke. In the paths we traversed, scorpions, lizards, and snakes were numerous. Our saddles were so heated by the sun that we could scarcely hold our hands upon them. The light blinded our eyes, the dust choked us, and every thing around was still as death. The plain which stretched before us like an ocean seemed awful to me, as if the caravan were doomed to go on forever. But at the same time my curiosity to see the proud Beni-Hassan, of whom I had heard so much, kept up my drooping spirits. “What kind of people are they?” I asked of the interpreter. “Thieves and murderers,” answered he; “faces from the other world; the worst crew in Morocco.” And I scanned the horizon with anxiety.
The faces from another world were not long in coming. We saw in advance a great cloud of dust, and in a few minutes were surrounded by a throng of three hundred mounted savages, in green, yellow, white, violet, and scarlet, ragged, dishevelled, and panting, as if they had just come out of a fray. In the midst of the thick dust they raised, we could discern their governor, a long-haired, black-bearded giant, who, followed by two hoary vice-governors, all armed with muskets, approached the ambassador, pressed his hand, and then disappeared. Immediately the usual charging, firing, and yelling began. They seemed frantic. They fired between the legs of our mules, over our heads, and close to our shoulders. Seen from a distance they must have looked like a band of assassins assailing us. There were formidable old men, with long white beards, all skin and bone, but looking as if they might live for centuries; and young men with long locks of black hair flying like manes. Many had their chests, arms, and legs bare, turbans in tatters, and red rags twisted round the head; caics torn, saddles broken, bridles made of cord, old sabres and poniards of strange forms. And such faces! “It is absurd,” said the commandant, “to suppose that these people will be capable of the self-sacrifice of not killing us.” Every one of those faces told a story of blood. They looked at us, as they passed, out of the corner of their eyes, as if to hide the expression of their glance. One hundred came on the right, one hundred on the left, one hundred behind us, stretched out in open order. This guard on the flank was new to us; but we were not long in perceiving its necessity. As we advanced, the tents became more frequent in the open country, so that we finally passed through real villages surrounded by cactus and aloe hedges. From all these tents came Arabs running, dressed in a single garment or shirt, in groups, on foot, on horseback, on the cruppers of donkeys—two, and sometimes three on the same animal; women with children hung to their shoulders, old men supported by boys, all breathless, wild to see us, and perhaps not to see us only. Gradually a veritable people had gathered about us. Then the soldiers of the escort began to disperse them. They darted among them at a gallop, here and there and everywhere, yelling, striking, overturning beast and rider, and raising a tempest of cries and curses. But the scattered groups formed again, and continued to accompany us at a run. Through the smoke and powder, broken by the lightning of the shots, we saw over those vast fields, in the distance, tents, horses, camels, droves of cattle, groups of aloes, columns of smoke, crowds of people turned toward us, motionless, in an attitude of amazement. We had at last reached an inhabited land! It did exist then, and was not a fable, this blessed population of Morocco! After an hour’s rapid riding we were again in the solitude of the country, with no one save our escort, and soon came to our camp, which was pitched upon the bank of the Sebù a thick chain of sentinels, on foot and armed with muskets, being extended all around the encampment. The country then was really dangerous! If I had been able to doubt it, I should have been more than persuaded by what I afterward heard.