It was still very hot: smoked spectacles kept off a certain amount of glare, and I wore two hats, a straw on top of a felt, having neglected to bring a solar topi; but even so the sun was unnecessarily generous, glowing on the splendid polish which some of the Arabs carried on their sepia-coloured skulls, and making it impossible to follow the crested larks, singing their heads off, up in the brilliant sky.
At last we felt a breeze, topped a low rise: an old greybeard all in white jogged up towards us on a donkey, a man running behind; a village lay below; but our eyes only went to one spot in the wide blue plain, which was spread out like a praying-carpet before us. That spot lay twenty-five miles off—a single tower, the Kutobea in Morocco City.
"Marrakesh!" cried Omar and Saïd simultaneously.
We rode on, across dry plain, over old river-beds, through patches of olive-trees, pink oleander, and castor-oil plant; leaving Arab douars behind; meeting with white cow-birds which recalled Tetuan; passing men with merchandise on camels and donkeys, strings of country people, and wanderers of all sorts; stopping to rest near wells where swallows were building in the brickwork and donkeys stood asleep in the shade; watching Arabs beating out corn with sticks, men ploughing, until we were once more amongst "greenery" and in a fertile stretch of country. Surely there was a river near. We passed fine crops of maize; onions were doing famously; fields of bearded wheat rustled in a life-giving breeze. And then the Wad-el-Nyfs, the largest river we had to cross, came into sight. Saïd at the outset precipitated himself into a great hole, and was well ducked: eventually we all landed safely on the other side, though the start was far from reassuring, some Arabs on the bank telling us it was "not good" to cross, and wading down into the torrent, for us to see that the water took them up to their necks almost at once, sweeping them down-stream. Before we rode into the water every man divested himself of each particle of clothing which he wore; and R. got across with two dark-skinned individuals clinging on to her legs, one on each side of the mule, a third hanging on to its bridle, and a fourth at its tail; while I followed also with four attendants. Not long ago, a party of missionaries was fording one of these very rivers, and neglected to have men at the mules' heads, one of which stumbled and threw its rider into the rapid stream: she was drowned. It was not deep at the time, or more precaution would have been taken: on the other hand, the stream is always like a mill-race, an accident can happen in a moment, and therefore a rule should be made, and never under any circumstances broken, to the effect that every rider have a man at the mule's head, and more than one, according to the state of the river.
We had a long hot ride to Tamsloect: the breeze, which was westerly, was useless to us; the track led over stony yellow hills; now and again we caught glimpses of the Kutobea standing up very far away; and all the time the great snow-fields, on the vast mountains, close upon our right, looked tantalizingly near and cold. Occasionally we watered the mules at a stream: tortoises were swimming about in one of these. But on the whole it was a singularly uneventful and a very sultry ride, until at last long lines of red mud walls, many gardens, three mosque towers, and some tall, dark, green cypress-trees proclaimed Tamsloect—an important village, possessing a Friday market, an unequalled view of the Atlas, and a saint, Mulai Abdullah Ben Hassi.
An Arab, Hadj Cadour, is one of the great men in Tamsloect; and to him, having an introduction, we went. The best hours spent in Morocco were those lived with certain of the Moors themselves, sharing for a short time their simple and yet fantastic life, learning something of their innate courtesy and generous hospitality. Hadj Cadour was a host of the old aristocratic school. He was out at his garden-house when we reached the village, entertaining friends at a tea party; and upon our message reaching him, he sent back a man on a white horse to point out another of his gardens close at hand, where he suggested that the tents should be pitched, while R. and I rode out and joined his tea party.
Leaving Omar to superintend the camp, we started off after the rider on the white horse: he led the way through the village, finally into a labyrinth of gardens, where we brushed through bearded wheat such as I have never seen before nor since, which luxuriated with olives, fruit-trees of all sorts, and pale pink monthly roses. Presently in the midst of the semi-wilderness a little white house intervened, half buried in trees, and close to it, in the shade, under an olive, was gathered Hadj Cadour's tea party, six or eight dignified Arabs, in those perfectly washed and blanched garments which so fit their solemn, dignified manners, their sad and intellectual type of faces: not that Moors are necessarily either of the two last; but they look it—that is all.
A great tea-kettle, as usual, loomed in the background; carpets and thick red Morocco leather cushions made seats for the members of the charmed circle: we reclined there with the rest, talking, as far as a few Arabic words would carry us, of our starting-point, our destination, the road, the rivers, the weather, Hadj Cadour helping us out, one and all interested and anxious to be understood and to understand. Our host dispensed sherrub de minat, the wine of the country, made from grapes; the little dome-shaped pewter teapot was there, with its fond associations of Morocco, together with the copper tray and circle of diminutive painted glasses; a gorgeous indolent sun poured down beyond the patch of shade; the hum and hover of insects vibrated in the air; and presently musicians were summoned—girls wearing pale green jellabs and silver ornaments, with yellow handkerchiefs twisted round their heads, men in bright colours. Sitting down between us, each was given a glass of sherrub de minat, and by-and-by they began to play. Weird and wild music it was, that of the tareegea, the gimbi, and the tahr, quaint native instruments of the roughest construction, and yet, as music, possessing fascination not a little.
The long kif-pipes were lighted, green tea and wine were sipped, the white figures stretched themselves on the cushions, and a great and dreamy content came over the faces under the white turbans. There was nowhere a trace of boredom such as mars so many European entertainments—rather the thing was loved for itself, and every man felt it and entered into its spirit. Now and then the musicians broke into a strange song, and the guests beat their hands and murmured in chorus; then again they would seem half intoxicated, in a harmless fashion, with kif and wine and music, and would appear to be absent in a world of their own. The music had a lilt in it, and often a suggestion of something half tamed, desperate, swung along with the cadences; and thin wreaths of smoke from the long pipes blew up through the olive branches, and an Arabic sentence dropped now and again on the ear: the hot, slow, sleepy afternoon waned. . . .
Poetry bulks so largely in the Arabic nature. Emotional and yet simple, that nature is, to a certain extent, appealed to by the refined. The sordid and vulgar have no attractions for it. There is no language more poetical than the Arabic language, where "snow" is called "hair of the mountain" and "rainbow" is "bride of the rain." "Red mullet" is "the sultan of fishes": "maiden-hair fern" is translated by "little cane of the well." Ordinary Arabic words show an extraordinary gift of description: the word for "secretly" means literally "under the matting," and "never" is expressed thus, "when the charcoal takes root and the salt buds."