‘A Spaniard, guard of a cordon at Tetuan, was killed, and there was nearly a revolution amongst the Mohammedans at Tangier. Then an order came from the Sultan to remove cordons, and saying Foreign Representatives were only empowered to deal in sanitary and quarantine regulations by sea and not inland. My colleagues (except German—Belgian is absent) were furious and said it was all my doing, and they have been baying at me ever since like a pack of wolves, as the cordon is taken off. The malady in the interior, whatever it is, cholera or typhus, is on the wane, but deaths from starvation are numerous.
‘Sultan is feeding some three thousand at Marákesh. Rain has fallen in the South, but cattle are dead or unfit to plough, and the poor have no seed. The ways and means of the Government are coming to an end, and the little impulse lately given to trade and civilisation will, I fear, be lost for years.’
On November 15 he writes again on the subject:—
The doctors at Tangier, Mazagan, and Mogador have now formally declared that the prevalent disease is not cholera asiatica, but that it has a choleraic character. The famished, weak, and poor invalids are carried off, but if a person in comfortable circumstances is attacked, a dose of castor oil, or even oil, cures them. This is not cholera asiatica. There have been cases they say at Tangier, but the mortality this year is less than usual.
Gibraltar, however, continues its rigorous measures—thirty days quarantine—and will not admit even an egg under that. I see no hope for improvement until after next harvest. The poor must starve. These quarantines increase the misery, for they check trade, and the poor engaged in labour connected with commerce are in a starving state. The German Minister and I are doing what we can to relieve about three hundred people here. Robert relieves some 2,700 daily at Mogador.
It is pouring; what a blessing! All the wells in the town are dry. I send a mile to get water: two mules at work, and my water-supply must cost me two shillings a day.
Towards aiding the starving poor in the Moorish coast towns £2,600 were raised in London, and at Tangier in December Sir John writes:—
Last month six of the Foreign Representatives had a meeting, and we decided on raising a subscription to aid these wretched people to return to their distant homes. There are some four hundred. £60 was subscribed before the meeting broke up, and then we sent it on to the Moorish authorities and the well-to-do folk—Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans, and I believe the collection will amount to £250. Clothes are to be supplied for the naked, provisions for the road, and with money sufficient to exist on for a month, we send them off to their distant homes.
We take this step to free Tangier from a crowd of wretched people who have no homes, and who sleep in the streets under arches. You can imagine the consequences in our little town, which had become a model as far as scavenging is concerned.
Though in the Northern provinces the famine had sensibly abated, in the South there was still much distress, and disease was rife among all classes. On March 5, 1879, Sir John writes to his sister with reference to his son, then Consul at Mogador, who had already been dangerously ill:—