And the night was almost cold!
In the morning at sunrise, we were on the left bank of the Sebù, at the same point where we had crossed coming from Tangiers; and we had hardly reached it before we saw appear upon the opposite bank, with his officers and soldiers, the governor, Sid-Bekr-el-Abbassi, with the same white vesture, and the same black horse caparisoned in sky blue, with which he had the first time appeared.
But the passage of the river presented this time an unforeseen difficulty.
Of the two boats on which we were to cross, one was in pieces; the other broken in more than one place, and half sunk in the mud of the shore. The little duar inhabited by the boatmen’s families was deserted; the river was dangerous to ford, and no other boat to be had except at a distance of a day’s journey. How were we to cross, and what was to be done? A soldier swam across and carried the notice to the governor, who sent another soldier by the same road to explain. The boatmen had been notified the night before to hold themselves in readiness for the passage of the Ambassador and his suite, who would arrive in the morning; but finding the boats in an unserviceable condition, and not being capable, or not choosing to endure the fatigue of mending them, they had fled during the night, heaven knows where, with their families and animals, to avoid punishment by the governor. There was nothing to be done but to try and mend the least broken of the two boats, and this we did. The soldiers went off to get men from the neighboring duars, and the work was begun under the direction of Luigi, one of the two sailors, who on that, to him memorable occasion, gloriously sustained the honor of the Italian marine. It was good to see how the Arabs and Moors labored. Ten of them together, yelling and flying about, did not do in half an hour the work that Luigi and Ranni, in military silence, did in five minutes. Everybody gave orders, everybody criticized, everybody got angry, everybody cut the air with imperious gestures, until they all seemed like so many admirals, and not one of them accomplished any thing. Meantime the governor and the caid conversed in loud voices across the river; the soldiers careered about at a gallop seeking the fugitives along the banks; the sumpter beasts forded the river in a long file with water up to their necks; the workmen chanted the praises of the Prophet, and on the opposite shore arose a great blue tent under which the slaves of Sid-Bekr-el-Abbassi were busy in preparing an exquisite collation of figs, sweetmeats, and tea, which we watched through our glasses, humming the while a chorus from a semi-serious opera, composed during our sojourn at Fez, and called “Gl’ Italiani nel Marôcco.”
With the aid of the Prophet, the boat was ready within two hours; Ranni took us on his shoulders, and deposited us one by one on the prow, and we reached the other side, with our feet up to the ankles in water, that came in on every side, but without having been forced to swim for it; a good fortune, of which we were not sure at our departure.
The governor, Sid-Bekr-el-Abbassi, who had heard of the praises which the Ambassador had bestowed upon him to the Sultan, was more amiable and fascinating to us than ever. After a little rest, we went on to Karia-el-Abbassi, which we reached about noon, and were received and passed the hot hours in the same white chamber in which thirty-five days before we had seen the pretty little daughter of our host peep at us from behind the paternal turban.
Here Sid-Bekr-el-Abbassi presented to the Ambassador, among other people, a Moor of about fifty years of age, of a noble aspect and agreeable manners, whom none of us, I think, have since forgotten, because of the strange things we were told about his family. He was the brother of one Sid-Bomedi, formerly governor of the province of Ducalla, who languished for eight years in the dungeons of Fez. A tyrant and a prodigal, after having bled his people, he contracted ruinous loans with European merchants, accumulated debt upon debt, brought the wrath of God within and without his house, was arrested and taken to Fez by order of the Sultan, who, believing him to be the possessor of hidden treasures, had his house pulled down and search made among the ruins and under the foundations, and banished from the province, under pain of death, all his family, in the fear that they, knowing the hiding-place, would get possession of the money. But, nothing being found—perhaps because there was nothing—and the Sultan still persisting in his belief in a treasure which the prisoner knew and refused to reveal, the latter had never more beheld the light of the sun, and was, perhaps, condemned to die in prison. And the case of Sid-Bomedi is not rare among the governors of Morocco, who, being all more or less enriched at the expense of their people, furnish the government that wishes to get possession of their wealth, the advantage of doing so under color of punishing a guilty man.
The governor, or the pashà upon whom the governor has set his eye, is called in a friendly manner to Fez, or to Morocco, or perhaps arrested suddenly in the night by a company of the imperial soldiers, who take him by forced marches to the capital, tied on the crupper of a mule, with his head hanging down and his face turned to the sun. As soon as he arrives he is loaded with chains and thrown into a dungeon. If he reveals the hiding-place of his wealth, he is sent back with honor to his province, where in a little while, by worse exactions than before, he can make up again that which has been taken from him. If he will not reveal it, he is left to rot in his prison, and bastinadoed every day until the blood comes, until, reduced to extremity, he decides to speak rather than perish in chains. If he reveals only in part, he is bastinadoed just the same, until he has made a clean breast of it. Some of the more astute ones, foreseeing the catastrophe in time, turn it aside by going in person to the court with a long caravan of camels and mules laden with precious gifts; but in order to make these gifts, they are obliged to spend a large part of their wealth; and it follows that their safety is scarcely less fatal to the provinces governed by them than if they were to return from their prison despoiled of all their treasure. Some, also, die in prison, and under the stick make no revelations, in order to leave all they have to their families, who know where it is concealed; and others die because they have nothing to reveal. But these are rare, because in Morocco it is the custom to hide money, and it is known that the Moors are masters in the art. They talk of treasures built up under the sill of the house-door, in the pilasters of the court, in the stairs, in the windows; of houses demolished stone by stone to the foundations, without the discovery of a treasure that was really there; of slaves killed and secretly buried, after having helped their masters to conceal it; and the vulgar mix with these horrible and painful truths their pretty legends of spirits and prodigies.
The governor, el-Abbassi, accompanied us toward evening as far as the camp, which was about two hours distant from his house, in a field full of flowers and tortoises, between the river Dà, which divides itself just there into an infinity of canals, and a beautiful hill crowned by the green cupola of a saint’s tomb. At a gunshot from our tents was a large duar, surrounded by aloes and the Indian fig. All the inhabitants rushed out at sight of us. Then we saw how much the governor was beloved by his people. Old men, young men, youths and children, all ran to him to have his hand placed upon their heads, and then went away content, turning back to look at him with an expression of affection and gratitude. The presence, however, of the beloved governor did not serve to protect us from the usual bitter glances and the usual reproaches. The women, half-hidden behind the hedges, with one hand pushed forward a child to go and be blessed by the governor, and with the other sent his brother to tell us that we were dogs. We saw babies about two feet high, quite naked, and hardly able to stand, coming tottering toward us, and showing a fist about as large as a nut, cry, “Accursed be thy father!” and because they were afraid to come alone they made groups of seven or eight, so compact that they might all have been carried on a tray; and advancing with a threatening air to within ten paces of us, stammered out their small insolence. How they amused us! One group among others advanced against Biseo to wish that some relation or other of his might be roasted. Biseo raised his pencil; the two first falling back upon the others, they in their turn upon those behind, half the army presently lay with their legs in the air. Even the governor burst out laughing.