The French Consul waited upon the Governor for explanations about the movements of the troops. His Excellency observed, "I am ordered by my Sultan to defend this city against all assailants, and I shall do so till I am buried beneath its ruins. Though all the coast-cities were captured, Mogador should never be surrendered."
Some of the credulous Moors said, "The Shereefs will come from Tafilet, led on by our Lord Mahomet, and destroy all the cursed Nazarenes. The Sheerefs will fire against the French leaden balls, and silver balls." Another observed to me, "If a fleet should come here, it will be immediately sunk, because our Sultan has ordered every ball to hit, and none to miss."
This is not unlike what a Turk of Tripoli once said to me about the Grand Signor and his late reforms. "The Turks will soon be civilized, because the Sultan has given an order for all the Turks to be civilized." The large guns of the forts were practised, and the guns of the grand battery loaded. The infantry continued to practise on the beach of the port: their manoeuvres were very uncouth and disorderly, they merely moved backwards and forwards in lines of two deep. The French Consul, Monsieur Jorelle, discontinued his usual promenade, to prevent his being insulted, and so to avoid the the painful necessity of demanding satisfaction.
Mr. Willshire, being well known to the Mogador population, had not so much to fear. Here is the advantage of a long residence in a country. The French Government lose by the frequent changing of their consuls. Still, M. Jorelle was right in not exposing himself to the mob, or the wild levies who had come from their mountains. The fault of the Governor was, in exciting the warlike fanaticism of the tribes of the interior against the Christians, which he ought to have known the city authorities might have extreme difficulty in keeping within bounds. No European could pass the gates of the city without being spat upon, and cursed by the barbarous Berbers.
I paid a visit to M. Authoris, the Belgium merchant, and the only European trader carrying on business independently of the Emperor. He represented the commerce of the country to be in a most deplorable condition. "There is now nothing to buy or sell on which there is a gain of one per cent. The improvidence of the people is so great that, should one harvest fail, inevitable famine would be the result, there not being a single bushel of grain more in the country than is required for daily consumption. Nor will the people avail themselves of any opportunity of purchasing a thing cheap when it is cheap; they simply provide for their hourly wants. They act in the literal sense of 'Take no thought for the morrow, but let the morrow take care of itself.' As to the Jews, they feast one day and fast the next." With regard to the excitement then existing, M. Authoris observed. "This Government, on hearing rumours of Spanish and French expeditions against the country, must naturally make use of what power it has, the Holy War power, to excite the people in their own defence. The Moors cannot discriminate Gazette intelligence. When a worthless newspaper mentions an expedition being fitted out against Morocco, the Emperor immediately sees a fleet of ships within sight of his ports, and hears the reports of bombarding cannon." The raw levies of Shedmah and Hhaha continued to enter the town, but only a small number at a time, lest they should alarm the inhabitants. They went about, peeping into houses, and wherever a door was open they would walk in, staring with a wild curiosity.
I had some conversation with my Moorish friends respecting the abolition of slavery. An old doctor observed, "The English are not more humane than other nations, but God has decreed that they should destroy the slave-trade among the Christians. This, however, is no praise to them, for they could not resist acting according to the will and mind of God. As for the Mussulmen, what they do is for the benefit of slaves, especially females, who, one and all, are doomed to death; [29] but, when purchased by the slave-dealers, their lives are spared, and they are made True Believers. Still, the Mussulmen would assist the English in destroying the ships which carry slaves;" (as if the Moors had any fleet).
The number of slaves in this city is from eight hundred to one thousand. It is difficult to ascertain any thing like the exact number, the opulent Moors having many negress slaves, with whom they live in a state of concubinage. Young, rich, and fashionable Moors, I was told for the first time in a Mahommedan country, have become disgusted with the old habit of managing and taking a wife early, and adopt the immoral practice of buying female slaves, by which they avoid, as they say, the trouble and expense of marrying females of their own rank in Moorish society. A good Mussulman must however, marry once in his life. Slaves are imported viâ Wadnoun from Timbuctoo and Soudan, and even from the western coast. Negroes of the Timbuctoo market are more esteemed than those of Guinea, being a stronger and more laborious race. The common price of a slave in Mogador is from 60 to 90 ducats; one day a beautiful African girl, freshly exported from the interior, was sold for 160 ducats, or about £20 sterling. This is considered an extraordinary high price.
Slaves are sold by criers about the streets in Morocco, and most towns, and not in bazaars, as in the East. But the most remarkable feature of slavery in this part of the world, is the Christian or European slavery carried further south, in the regions extending on the line of coast below Wadnoun, and the adjacent Sahara. Something like a regular system of Christian slavery is there going on, whilst its head-quarters are not more than five or six days' journey from this residence of the European Consuls. This white slavery consists in seizing shipwrecked sailors, numbers being fishermen from the Canary Islands. We know little about these poor captives, although we are so near Wadnoun, and are continually trading with Sous and this country. Mr. Davidson casually mentions them in his journal.
It is a settled and religious practice of merchants to keep Europeans ignorant of the south and the Desert; we only hear of these captives now and then, when one escapes, and after being bought and sold by a hundred different masters, is fortunate enough to be redeemed; of his companions in shipwreck, the escaped captive rarely knows anything. They are gone: they are either drowned near the coast, plundered and massacred, or carried far away into the Desert, and perhaps for ever. Formerly vessels navigated through the channel (if it may be so called) of the Canary Islands and the Wadnoun coast, by which they often got on shoal water, and were cast away; in this manner, whites were enslaved. Happily now, masters of vessels have become acquainted with this dangerous coast. They pass to the east of the Canaries, and fewer vessels are shipwrecked hereabouts.
The Spanish fishermen of the Canaries are chiefly now made captives. These poor people are either seized when becalmed near the coast, or captured on being cast on shore by the furious trade-winds, which sweep these desolate shores (often nine months out of twelve) and carry utter destruction with them. The wild and wandering Bedouins in bad weather, with the true storm scent of the wrecker, patiently watch the coasts, pouncing on their prey, with the voracity of the vulture, as it is thrown up from the deep, along the inhospitable shore. Having got the shipwrecked men in their possession, they act with the cunning and avarice of slave-dealers, and are aided by the still craftier Jews, who always render it very difficult for the consular agents to redeem these unhappy captives. For although a Jew, by the Mahometan law, cannot purchase slaves, yet by buying them-through Mussulmen, who share in the profits, from the Arabs who first seized the captives, the slaves are frequently kept back months in the Desert, being parted from one another before they can be ransomed.