Such historical recollections as are connected with Tangier are not flattering to the self-love of the two nations of Europe that have had most to do with it.
In 1437 the Portuguese, who then held Ceuta, attacked the town, but their army was defeated under the walls, and they were forced to conclude an ignominious peace. The terms included the cession of Ceuta to the Moors, and the delivery as a hostage of Dom Fernando, the king’s brother. The other stipulations not having been executed, the victors threw Dom Fernando into prison at Fez, and when he died in captivity hung up his body by the heels over the city walls.[1]
The fortune of war was changed in 1471 when the Portuguese took Tangier and several of the towns on the Atlantic coast, and the Moorish Sultan was forced to pay tribute to King Emanuel. Under less vigorous guidance, the Portuguese were unable to retain their ascendancy, but they kept possession of Tangier till, after nearly two centuries, it was, by a secret treaty, ceded to England as part of the dowry of Catharine of Braganza on her marriage with Charles II. When the brave Governor Dom Fernando de Menezes received the information, he entreated the Queen Regent to spare him the grief of seeing the city made over to the enemies of the Catholic faith. Her answer was the offer of a Marquisate if he obeyed, and dismissal from her service if he persisted in resisting her will. He chose the latter, threw up his command, and devoted the rest of his life to writing a history of the city. The English Court set great store by the new acquisition, believing, as the Earl of Sandwich said, that if it were walled and fortified with brass it would yet repay the cost. But English policy was then at its lowest ebb, and neither vigour nor intelligence directed any branch of our affairs. The English settlers sent out were an ill-conditioned rabble, ignorant of the country, its language and manners, and the Governor and the garrison were no better than the rest. After accomplishing one useful work by constructing a mole that converted the roadstead into a secure harbour, they were disappointed in their expectation of an extensive trade with the interior, and, what was more galling, were worsted in every encounter with the Moors, till, in 1685, the Government in London decided to abandon Tangier. When this became known at Lisbon, the Portuguese strongly urged the impolicy of abandoning such a position to pirates, and requested that it should be restored to them on condition that the English should have free use of the port. With characteristic meanness and imbecility the Duke of York—soon afterwards James II.—opposed the gift, and urged that the honour of England required that the place should be dismantled, and be left for occupation to whoever could hold it. His advice prevailed; and, on the retirement of the English force, the mole was effectually blown up, destroying the only good harbour for shipping on the seaboard of Marocco—a distance of fully nine hundred miles.
Nature, however, has made Tangier the port of North Marocco, and, in spite of human perversity, it is a place of some importance. Ready access to the fertile provinces lying between the Straits of Gibraltar and Fez has made it the centre of a considerable trade in hides and grain, which go to France and England, to say nothing of cattle and other supplies for the garrison of Gibraltar. Its nearness to Europe has made it the residence of the representatives of the principal civilised Powers, and its admirable climate has attracted invalids from Gibraltar and elsewhere, in spite of such drawbacks as dirt, bad smells, and the utter absence of roads.
On our arrival, we were most kindly received by Sir John Drummond Hay, to whose intimate knowledge of the country and justly acquired influence with the Moorish Court we are largely indebted for whatever success attended our journey. We learned from him that the Sultan had issued orders to the Governor of the Atlas provinces to allow Hooker to visit the range of the Great Atlas south of the city of Marocco, and to take every precaution for his comfort and safety; but he added that, although there was no reason to doubt the Sultan’s good faith, every artifice would be used to defeat the object, and that it would not be prudent to start for the south without an autograph letter from the Sultan himself, for which he had already made application. The Court was at this time at Fez—several days’ journey from Tangier; and, as business moves at a slow pace in this country, it was probable that we might have to wait some time for the necessary document. We therefore at once decided on devoting the interval to excursions in the neighbourhood of Tangier and Tetuan. The latter city lies at no great distance from the lofty peaks of the Beni Hassan, probably the highest part of the north-western range of the Lesser Atlas, best known as the Riff Mountains. There could be no doubt as to the botanical interest attaching to a visit to that range, the higher region of which is entirely unknown to naturalists, and we were very desirous to make an attempt in that direction. After full consideration, however, Sir J. D. Hay felt it necessary to object to our project, as involving undue risk. The Riff mountaineers enjoy a virtual independence, merely paying tribute to the Sultan. They are fierce and fanatical; and the presence of a Christian on the highest mountain, which is rendered sacred by a famous marabout—tomb of a Mohammedan saint—would be regarded as a profanation. Meantime, we were led to hope that we should be able to ascend the mountains nearer to Tetuan, and there was no difficulty whatever about excursions in the neighbourhood of Tangier.
Our first walk, in the afternoon of the 7th, was in the agreeable society of Sir J. D. Hay, to Ravensrock, his summer residence, on the wooded slope of the Djebel Kebir, overlooking the straits. Near the city gate we passed the cemetery, where turbaned tombstones almost disappear amidst the copious growth of prickly pear (Opuntia vulgaris), and then went some way through dusty lanes between lines of American aloe (Agave americana), and quickset hedges surrounding gardens where palms, acacias, and a few poplars were the prevailing trees. As we cleared the enclosures, and got into irregular, open ground, where steep slopes of uncultivated land alternate with patches of tillage, our eyes were gladdened by the sight of many a bright southern flower, already blossoming abundantly, in spite of the weather which, till lately, had been unusually cold. Trefoils, Medicagos, vetches, and other leguminous plants were here the predominant forms, as they are everywhere in the spring flora of the Mediterranean region. As we began to ascend the flanks of the Djebel Kebir, the character of the vegetation changed. Where the ground has not been cleared to make a garden for some of the European residents, whose little villas are scattered over the slope, the ground is covered with masses of luxuriant shrubs, and climbing herbaceous plants, among which some familiar forms of the North are mingled with many exotic species. Thus we saw roses, brambles, bryony, honeysuckle, and white convolvulus holding their ground amidst masses of lentisk, myrtle, Phillyrea, Alaternus, dwarf prickly oak (Quercus coccifera), gum cistus, and the golden profusion of five or six species of the Cytisus tribe that replace our native broom and gorse. After ascending several hundred feet by the roughest of paths, carried along a shaded gully, we entered through a gate the terraced garden whereon stands the house.
Nothing of its kind can surpass the beauty of the view. The steep slope below is planted with oranges and pomegranates—the first laden with golden fruit, the second with crimson flowers—broken here and there by palms, figs, olives, and carob trees, standing against a background of deep blue water, dancing in the gentle westerly breeze. On our left the steep slope of the mountain, rising over against the blue outline of Cape Trafalgar, forms the portal through which the Atlantic pours its current into the Mediterranean. Along the opposite shore of Spain every undulation, from the coast to the distant purple sierra, is plainly seen. The little town of Conil and the very houses of Tarifa are discernible with the naked eye, and visitors are enabled through a glass to watch the people as they come and go, and that extraordinary phenomenon for Southern Spain, the diligence, that of late years has plied between Algeciras and Cadiz. Turning to the right, the eye reaches the entrance to the Mediterranean, between the rock of Gibraltar and the loftier summit of Ape’s Hill; and in clear weather the range of the Serrania de Ronda, stretching towards Malaga, is seen on one side, while on the other the snowy peak of the Beni Hassan, south of Tetuan, closes the view. To give variety, if that were wanting, there is the ceaseless passage of shipping through this greatest of maritime highways, in a double stream of vessels, of every size and every nation, from the great Peninsular and Oriental steamer to the Moorish felucca. It is an example of the readiness with which sound travels over an unbroken surface, that the morning and evening gun at Gibraltar, nearly forty miles distant, are usually heard at this spot.
In the course of several delightful evenings passed in the agreeable society of Sir J. D. Hay and his family, we obtained much curious and valuable information respecting the country and its inhabitants, most of which was confirmed by our own subsequent observation and experience. We already knew that Marocco is the China of the West, and that while other Mohammedan States have been drawn, though at a tardy and halting pace, into following the general movement of European progress, this has remained more isolated and more impenetrable than even the Celestial Empire itself. But we were scarcely prepared to find that the utmost excesses of barbarism are matters of daily occurrence in a country so close at hand; and though we had read startling statements in the books of preceding travellers, and heard confirmatory tales during our stay in North Marocco, we were inclined to think that, at the worst, these referred to solitary acts of cruelty, probably magnified by the proverbial tendency to exaggerate all that is strange and horrible. It was not until we had spent some time in the southern provinces, beyond the reach of European prying observation, that we could persuade ourselves that these terrible stories of cruelty and wrong merely give a true representation of the ordinary condition of the country. Sir J. D. Hay, who probably knows it better than any other European, was not slow to testify to the good qualities of the rural population of Marocco, and the general absence of crime. We were afterwards led to believe that if life and property may be said to be tolerably secure throughout the portion of the empire really subject to the Sultan’s authority, this is due rather to the fact that temptation is rare, and the danger of swift and bloody retribution imminent, than to the existence of any high moral standard among the people. It is a strange inversion of all notions of government, that crime should come from above rather than below, and that the dread that men feel for the safety of their persons and goods is directed rather to the constituted guardians of order than to the outcasts from society. The first feeling of one unused to a barbarous government is surprise that it should be allowed even to exist, much more that it should possess considerable stability, and be handed on from one generation to the next, without a general outburst of resistance. Observation tends to explain this seeming enigma. Bad as it may be, the oppression exercised by the few strikes only those who are in some way conspicuous. The common mass, who offer no special temptation to extortion, escape comparatively unhurt, and feel little sympathy for the victim. Accordingly it is only when a Sultan or a Governor indulges in mere gratuitous acts of cruelty against his humbler subjects, that we hear of a general revolt. Oppression is, after all, less intolerable than anarchy; and at that very time most men would have chosen to live in Marocco rather than in Sicily.
Among other objects of interest Sir J. D. Hay showed us a coloured view of the Great Atlas range, as seen from the neighbourhood of the city of Marocco, executed at the time of his father’s mission to that city in 1829, and this naturally engaged our special attention.[2] The most singular point in the structure of the mountains was a very long range of what were represented as precipitous rocks of seemingly uniform height and structure, that appeared to rise abruptly from the plain, and to form an almost continuous outer wall or rampart on the north side of the chain. We were also shown a copy of Hollar’s[3] rare engraving, representing Tangier at the period of the English occupation, with the soldiers of Charles II., in their cumbrous uniforms, strutting on the mole.
Those who have read his interesting and lively little work, ‘Morocco and the Moors,’ will not be surprised that so keen a sportsman and close an observer of the habits of wild animals as our host should have many curious anecdotes to tell; but we were not prepared to hear that less than twenty-five years before a lion had been killed close to the spot where his beautiful villa now stands. At the present time no animal of prey larger than a jackal is seen in this part of the country, but the wild boar is as abundant there as it is everywhere throughout Marocco. No doubt the religious scruples that forbid the use of the flesh have gone far to prevent the natives from reducing the numbers of these mischievous brutes. One anecdote in favour of an animal whose moral character stands in low repute may here be permitted.