The transit from Mduma to Mechinez was a succession of optical illusions of so singular a character, that if it had not been for the suffocating heat, we should have been immensely amused by them. At about two hours from the encampment, we saw, vaguely gleaming afar off in a vast naked plain, the white minarets of Mechinez, and rejoiced that we were so near our journey’s end. But what had seemed to us a plain was in reality an interminable succession of parallel valleys, separated by large waves of land all of equal height, which presented the aspect of one continued surface; so that as we went forward the city was perpetually hidden and again revealed, as if it were peeping at us; and besides that, the valleys being broken, rocky, and traversed only by winding and difficult paths, our road yet to be accomplished was at least double in distance to what it appeared to be; and it seemed as if the city withdrew as we advanced; at every valley our hearts opened to hope, and at every hill we despaired again, and voices weak and high were heard, and lamentable sighs, and angry propositions to renounce any future voyage to Africa, for whatever purpose or under whatever conditions; when suddenly, as we came out of a grove of wild olives, the city rose before us, and all our lamentations were lost in exclamations of wonder.
Mechinez, spread upon a long hill, surrounded by gardens, bounded by three ranges of battlemented walls, crowned with minarets and palms, gay and majestic, like a suburb of Constantinople, presented herself to our eyes, with her thousand terraces drawn white against the azure of the sky. Not a cloud of smoke issued from all that multitude of houses; there was not a living soul to be seen, either on the terraces or before the walls; nor was there a sound to be heard: it seemed a deserted city, or a scene in a theatre.
The dinner tent was pitched in a bare field, at two hundred paces from one of the fifteen gates of the city, and in a few minutes we sat down to satisfy, as some elegant prose writer remarks, “our natural talent for food and drink.”
We were scarcely seated, when there issued from the city gate, and advanced toward the encampment, a company of horsemen superbly dressed and preceded by foot-soldiers.
It was the governor of Mechinez, with his relatives and officials. At about twenty paces off they dismounted from their horses, which were covered with trappings in all the colors of the rainbow, and rushed toward us shouting all together in one voice, “Welcome! welcome! welcome!”
Gateway At Mechinez.
The governor was a young man of a mild countenance, with black eyes and blacker beard; all the others, men of forty or fifty, were tall, bearded, dressed in white, and as neat and perfumed as if they had come out of a box. They all pressed our hands, passing round the table with a tripping step, and smiling graciously, and then took their places behind the governor. One of them, seeing a bit of bread on the ground, picked it up and put it on the table, saying something which probably meant: “Excuse me; the Koran forbids the wasting of bread; I am doing my duty as a good Mussulman.” The governor offered us the hospitality of his house, which was accepted. Only the two artists and I remained in the camp, and waited until it should be cool before going into the city.
Selam kept us company, and related to us the wonders of Mechinez.
“At Mechinez are the most beautiful women in Morocco, the finest gardens in Africa, and the most beautiful imperial palace in the world.” Thus he began; and in fact Mechinez does enjoy such fame in the empire. To be a native of Mechinez is, for a woman, to be beautiful, and for a man, to be jealous. The imperial palace, founded by Muley-Imael, which in 1703 had in it four thousand women and eight hundred and sixty-seven children, had an extent of two miles of circuit, and was ornamented with marble columns, brought partly from the ruins of the city of Pharaoh, near Mechinez, and partly from Leghorn and Marseilles. There was a great hall, or alkazar, where the most precious European tissues were sold; a vast market, joined to the city by a road ornamented with a hundred fountains; a park of immense olive-trees; seven large mosques; a formidable garrison with artillery, that held the Berbers of the mountains in check; an imperial treasure of five hundred millions of francs; and a population of fifty thousand inhabitants, who were considered as the most cultured and the most hospitable in the empire.