Sir J. D. Hay had brought up a young leopard in his house until the animal had reached his full size and strength, and it seemed a scarcely safe companion for the younger members of his family. He therefore resolved to present it to the Zoological Gardens in London, where it was duly installed. Some two years later, when on a visit to England, its former master bethought him of the leopard, and, going to the gardens, recognised the animal and spoke to him in Arabic. The once familiar sounds immediately awoke the animal’s memory, and it at once displayed the appearance of unbounded, but joyous, excitement. On explaining the circumstances the cage was opened, and the animal showed the utmost delight at the approach of its early friend and master.
On the night of Easter Sunday, while enjoying the cool air and the view from the roof of the British Residency, we beheld that grand display of the Aurora Borealis, which was visible at the same time throughout Western Europe. As in the equally brilliant auroras of the preceding autumn, which the popular imagination in many different parts of Europe had attributed to the burning of Paris, the characteristic feature of this display was the pale flickering crimson tinge that rose from the northern and western horizon towards the zenith. Brilliant auroral phenomena are rarely seen in so low a latitude as Tangier; but thirty-two years earlier Hooker had beheld them from a still more southern station, during the visit of the Antarctic Expedition to Madeira in 1839, as described by Sir James Ross in the narrative of that voyage.
We were much impressed by the accounts we received of the remarkable salubrity of the climate of North Marocco, and we gathered abundant evidence to the same effect in regard to other parts of the territory. Nothing is more rare than to find a country where neither the natives nor foreign visitors have any complaint to make against the climate, and in that respect Marocco is almost unique. As regards the season of our visit, however, our case was that of nearly all travellers in whatever country they may find themselves. We had arrived in an exceptional season! How often is this fact gravely stated as something remarkable and unusual in the experience of the narrator, whereas, if he would but reflect, it merely represents the common experience of mankind in most countries of the earth! Excepting some portions of the equatorial zone, where the seasons recur with tolerable constancy, our notions of the climate of a place are got at by taking an average among a great many successive seasons. It is true that our own islands afford an extreme instance of variability; but elsewhere in the temperate zones of both hemispheres, the difference between corresponding seasons in successive years is often very great. Any one who watches the meteorological notices published in our newspapers, must be aware that if any particular day, week, or month be compared with the general average for the same period during a long term of years, he will find it to be either considerably hotter, or colder, or drier, or moister than the corresponding average day, week, or month; and when registers shall have been kept for a sufficient time in other countries, the same result will be seen to hold good, though in a somewhat lesser degree. Travellers will then be prepared to find that they should expect to enjoy or suffer from an exceptional season, and will think it more remarkable when they happen to alight on a season that approaches near to the average. That preceding our visit had been unusually severe; snow had been seen at Tangier, and had lain for some hours on the rock of Gibraltar, and, as a consequence affecting the object of our journey, the spring vegetation in North Marocco was unusually retarded. At the same time, so far as our sensations went, nothing could be more agreeable than the climate of this season, the thermometer in the shade during the day varying from 60° to 66° Fahr., and the air being delightfully clear and bracing.
On April 8 we started for a short excursion to the headland of Cape Spartel. In the immediate neighbourhood of Tangier Europeans may safely walk or ride unattended; but, as we were going a little beyond the ordinary limits, it was considered prudent to give us the escort of two soldiers, and to these we added a baggage mule and a native guide. In a botanical sense we were about to travel over beaten ground—the only spot in all Marocco where a naturalist can without difficulty wander at will over rocky hills that retain their natural vegetation. The little that was then known of the flora of the empire would have dwindled to a scanty list if we had struck out the rich collections that successive botanists during the last 100 years have brought from the Djebel Kebir and the adjoining hilly district west of Tangier. Although there was little prospect of new discovery, the expedition could not fail to offer a veritable feast to a botanist, and especially to one not already familiar with the vegetation of the opposite coast and the adjoining region of southern Portugal.
After standing the fire of some harmless ‘chaff’ from the Jew and Moorish boys that loitered about the city gate, we soon got clear of the enclosures near the town, and descended through cultivated land into a little grassy valley that lies below the hilly range of the Djebel Kebir. Bright spring annuals—blue and yellow lupen, crimson Adonis, a deep orange marigold (Calendula suffruticosa), blue pimpernel, and other less conspicuous flowers—enlivened the tillage ground; but the northern botanist is more struck by the perennial species that hold their ground on the large portion of the soil which the plough has not touched. Predominant among these, as elsewhere throughout a large part of the Mediterranean region, is the palmetto, or dwarf palm (Chamærops humilis). Where unmolested by animals, and protected from the periodic fires that the native herdsmen renew for the sake of getting herbage for their cattle, it forms a thick trunk, ten or twelve feet in height, which probably takes a long time to attain its full size; but in the open places it is commonly stemless, and covers the ground with its radiating tufts of stiff fan-shaped leaves. Many plants of the lily tribe abound; but in this mild climate most of them had flowered in winter, and few now showed more than their tufts of large root-leaves. Most conspicuous is the large maritime squill (Scilla maritima of Linnæus). The flowers are not large or showy, and do not correspond with the size of the bulb which often equals that of a man’s head. Another species of the same genus (Scilla hemisphærica) is more ornamental, as are the two common asphodels. The slender iris (I. Sisyrhynchium of Linnæus), whose delicate flower lasts only a few hours—opening one at a time on successive days, appearing about mid-day and withering in the afternoon—is very abundant.
On reaching the hollow ground, where a slender stream runs through damp meadows, we were charmed by the delicate tint of a pale blue daisy that enamels the green turf. It is merely a slight variety of the little annual daisy (Bellis annua), so common in many parts of Southern Europe; but the blue tint does not seem to have been noticed elsewhere. The larger blue daisy, afterwards seen as one of the ornaments of the mountain region of the Great Atlas, was at first supposed to belong to the same species; but, besides that this is perennial, it shows other less obvious differences.
It was on the slopes of the Djebel Kebir, where the stony ground is almost exclusively occupied by a dense mass of small shrubs, few of them rising more than three or four feet from the ground, but nearly all covered with brilliant flowers, that we first began to seize the really characteristic features of the North Marocco flora. A great variety and abundance of flowering perennials of shrubby habit is, indeed, a distinguishing feature of the whole Mediterranean region; but very little observation was needed to show that we were here in that well marked division that includes Southern Portugal, South-western Spain, and the opposite corner of Africa. This may be called for distinction the Cistus and Heath region; for though most of the same kinds of Cistus and Helianthemum extend as far as the south of France, and many species of heath inhabit the Atlantic coasts of Europe as far north as Connemara, it is only here that both these tribes flourish together, and give a prevailing character to the vegetation. Most conspicuous of all is the gum-cistus (C. ladaniferus), which in the Sierra Morena and the adjoining parts of Spain and Portugal obtains such predominance that for twenty miles together one may ride through a continuous thicket where the peculiar scent of the gum that covers the leaves and young branches is never absent. About Tangier the rich purple spot that usually adorns the base of the large petals is wanting, and the flowers show unmixed snowy white. Of the same tribe, besides several true Cisti, there are many species of Helianthemum. Of heaths, along with the commoner kinds (Erica arborea and E. scoparia), we saw in abundance the rarer and more characteristic forms, E. australis and E. umbellata. E. ciliata, one of our English rarities, is here very scarce, though it grows on the opposite side of the Strait. Our common heather (Calluna vulgaris) still holds its ground, but in a poor and stunted condition. The rhododendron of the East (Rh. ponticum), that is at home in the mountain region of Asia Minor and Syria, and which strangely reappears here and there among the low hills between Tarifa and Algeciras, on the north side of the Straits, has not been found on the African shore; but until the coast between Tangier and Ceuta has become more accessible, it will not be safe to assume that it is wanting. Among the many shrubby leguminous plants whose flowers give the prevailing golden tint to the hill sides, two of the Broom tribe (Genista triacanthos and Cytisus tridentatus), plants of very peculiar aspect and characteristic of this region, attracted our attention. It is impossible to omit another ornament of the hills—a plant rather widely diffused but nowhere common (Lithospermum fruticosum), whose azure blue flowers formed a charming contrast with the surrounding masses of golden colour.
The botanical district to which the northern corner of Marocco belongs has been already called that of the Cistus and Heath, but no single species of those tribes exactly conforms to the limits above pointed out. There are, however, several less conspicuous plants whose distribution more closely agrees with those limits. The most singular of these is the Drosophyllum lusitanicum, a plant of the sun-dew tribe, whose branched stem bears several large yellow flowers. The numerous slender strap-shaped root-leaves, nearly a foot in length, that are gradually contracted to the thickness of whipcord, are beset with pellucid ruby-tipped glands, and present a peculiarity that appears to be unique in the vegetable kingdom. Any one who has remarked the growth of ferns must have seen that in the young state the leaves are rolled or curled inwards, so that in the process of unfolding the face or upper side of the leaf, which was at first concealed, is gradually opened and turned to the light. A similar process occurs in many other plants; but in Drosophyllum alone, so far as we know, the young leaf is rolled or curled the reverse way, so that the upper side of the leaf is that turned outwards. It appears to grow in many parts of Southern Portugal; reappears on the north side of the Straits of Gibraltar near Tarifa and Algeciras, and on the southern side about Cape Spartel and on the hills above Tetuan, where it commands a view of the opening of the Mediterranean, but extends no farther eastward. Very similar is the distribution in Europe of two ferns whose natural home seems to be in the Canary Islands—the graceful Davallia canariensis, and the Asplenium Hemionitis of Linnæus. Both occur here and there in shady spots, from the rock of Lisbon to Algeciras and Tangier, but are unable to travel eastward beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
The scarcity of trees in this country is mainly due to the mischievous interference of man. The same ignorant greed of the herdsman, who to procure a little meagre herbage for goats sets fire to wide tracts of brushwood, that has reduced whole provinces of Spain to a nearly desert condition, has been equally busy and equally effectual in Marocco. The evergreen oak, which might produce much valuable timber, is the chief indigenous tree of this country; but, except on the rocky western declivity of the hill above Cape Spartel, few here arrive at a moderate growth, and the same is true of the Portuguese oak (Quercus lusitanica). The latter, indeed, never attains a considerable stature; but, where preserved from damage, it forms thickets some twenty or thirty feet in height, and, if duly protected, would help to preserve the hilly districts of this region from being annually parched by the summer sun. One of the shrubby evergreen oaks of this country (Quercus coccifera, L.), whose dark green spiny leaves are more like those of a holly than of an ordinary oak, might perhaps be successfully introduced in the south-western parts of the British islands. Its very dense foliage would make it valuable as a screen, and it produces a good effect when mixed with other shrubs.
Although the distance did not exceed ten or twelve miles, we had so much to do in filling our tin boxes and portfolios that the sun was sinking in the Atlantic as we reached the lighthouse at Cape Spartel. It is impossible not to feel some interest in this structure that for so many a mariner marks the limit of the great continent, more than three times the area of Europe, that remains, in spite of all the efforts of modern enterprise, the chief home of all that is strange and mysterious and unknown in the world. It represents, too, the only concession that the Moor has made to the demands of modern civilisation; for the building has been raised at the cost of the Sultan of Marocco, though the expense of its maintenance is shared between the four Powers, England, France, Italy, and Spain. The representatives of these States at Tangier form a board of management, and each in turn undertakes the actual control and inspection of the building. It was by an especial favour, and on the ground of our scientific pursuits, that we received permission from the Spanish Consul-General, then Acting Commissioner, with the concurrence of his colleagues, to lodge for the night within the building. It stands on a rocky platform some 250 feet above the sea. The massive tower, or pharos, that bears the lantern, is about eighty feet in height, and, with the annexed building, is enclosed by a strong wall, forming an outer court. The interior of the building is singularly picturesque. An inner octagonal court, surrounded by pillared arcades, supported on round, slightly stilted arches, with a fountain of cool spring water in the middle, gives access to the rooms, small and bare but perfectly clean, of which three were given for our accommodation. Some fowls and eggs supplied by the lighthouse-keeper, eked out by the provisions we had carried from Tangier, produced an excellent supper, and the evening was fully employed till a late hour in arranging and laying out the spoils of our first day’s work in Marocco. It was near midnight when, before turning in for the night, each in turn paused in the court to enjoy the exquisite beauty of the scene. The full southern moon poured a flood of silver light through the arched spaces, converting the pattering spraydrops of the fountain into pearls and diamonds. The shadows of the slender columns lay like bars of ebony on the white flags; while, for a roof, the Great Bear, every star twinkling its brightest, stretched upward towards the zenith. The great tower rose in dark shadow, for the lantern was turned away from us; but we could discern, streaming out to seaward, in spite of the apparent clearness of the air, two faintly marked cones of yellow light that were soon quenched in the moonlight. The air was still, the sea was quiet, and at first the silence seemed unbroken; but as the listener stood, the pulses of the great ocean, though they smote but gently the cavernous rocks below, beat distinctly on the ear, and marked the passing minutes.