In May, when the country is dry, each basha or kaid is ordered to collect troops in his own district: then is Tetuan deserted, and every boy and young man absents himself. How the lady missionaries hid their house-boy! Tetuan sent off two hundred men, under a colonel, while we were there, which were to help punish certain rebellious tribes. Often these expeditions are for the purpose of raising taxes. In any case the tribes against which the Sultan's troops are sent are said to be "eaten up." Long before it happened it was known and talked of.
"Ah, yes; the Beni M`Saira would be eaten up in April."
The Tetuan two hundred were sent to help eat up the Beni M`Saira tribe, some of whom had abducted two Spanish children a year ago. The children had driven their pigs on to land belonging to the tribe—a thing abhorred of by Mohammedans, to whom pigs are unclean. Expostulation was not heeded, and the Beni M`Saira resorted to strong measures, and kidnapped the children. They were sold from family to family beyond hope of recovery, and it would be hard to say what was their fate. Of course they were never seen again. Tales were circulated which said that the girl had been turned into a dancing-girl, and taught to dance upon hot ashes, or she may have become slave and concubine to some Moor. She was sixteen years old, and the lady missionaries at Tetuan knew her well, and her ten-year-old brother.
The Spanish Government had complained to the Sultan, and now a year after the offence the Beni M`Saira were to be eaten up; there was to be a general raid upon their country: men would be killed, women taken as slaves, villages burnt, and corn destroyed. The worst part of the whole business is the fate of the prisoners on these occasions. These unfortunate men, suffering scarcely for their own misdeeds, are sent in chains to far-distant city prisons, whence they seldom emerge alive.
The colonel of the Tetuan contingent was an example of the rapid rises and the vicissitudes of life in Morocco. Only the other day he had been harbour-master down at Martine, but was accused of smuggling and turned out of that berth; he then took a café and sold drinks in Tetuan, when suddenly the Sultan's pleasure took the shape of making him a full-blown colonel in his troops. As in the days of Joseph, the chief butler is sent for out of prison and made much of: the baker is sent for and hanged.
A Saint-House, Tetuan.
The lucky colonel and his two hundred left Tetuan in bad weather: their pay was such that many of them, before starting, sold the bullets supplied them, in order to buy food with the money, preferring to fight without ammunition rather than on empty stomachs; but only one quarter of them got as far as El K`sar—the rest deserted on the road, to escape hunger and exhaustion from rain and cold.
The Oolad Moosa tribe were eaten up not long ago; their land was harried, their fruit-trees destroyed, and themselves killed, imprisoned, and enslaved. I was told by a Spaniard that he had seen five camel-loads of the heads of tribesmen brought into Larache while he was there. The Sultan offered three shillings per head. His soldiers sent up not a few heads which belonged to their own companions-in-arms. Consignments were sent off to various cities throughout Morocco, where the Jews, as usual, salted them, and they were set up over the gates and on the walls.
There is little or no artillery in his Sharīfian Majesty's army, though the few cannon he has, render him all-powerful against his rebellious tribesmen, who are only armed with rifles (principally French), which are smuggled into the country.