A grand lion was seen many years ago, standing in the early morning on the sand-hills which line the beach close to the town of Tangier, and causing great alarm. But it turned out to be a tame lion which a ‘Shloh’ woman—who, as a Sherífa, was endowed with a slight halo of sanctity—had brought captive from the Atlas Mountains. She led it about with only a loose rope round its neck, as she begged from village to village, and had arrived outside the gates of Tangier the previous evening, after they were closed, and she had laid down to sleep near the lion, which, during the night, had strayed away. This lion was quite tame and harmless, and came back to her from the sand-hills when she called it.
A Spanish gentleman told me that returning home late one dark night from a party in Tangier, carrying a small lantern to light his way, he saw what he fancied was a donkey coming towards him in one of the very narrow streets of the town where two stout persons on meeting can hardly pass each other. He turned his lantern on the object, and, to his dismay, saw the glistening eyes and shaggy head of a lion which he had already seen led in daytime by the woman through the streets. The beast was alone, without its keeper. The Don said he had never made himself so small as when he stood against a closed door to allow his Majesty to pass; which he did quite pacifically.
‘Oh ye blind! The lion to you!’
This accusation of blindness is perhaps the mildest form of abuse employed by the beaters, in the excitement of the hunt, to the guns posted to await the boar. Sir John, as Master of the Hunt, shared in the very liberal abuse indulged in by the men who had laboriously driven the boar from the thick coverts towards him and his friends, native and foreign, who waited to shoot the pigs as they broke. Every possible term of abuse—and Arabic is rich in such—together with imprecations such as only Oriental imagination could devise, would be yelled at them as a warning not to miss. Strangers too would always be indicated by any peculiarity in their appearance or dress. Neither did the excited beaters, at such moments, put any check on their rough wit. But the railing of Moorish sportsmen at each other, however violent in the ardour of the chase, is never resented.
As a case in point, Sir John related the following story.
A former Governor of Tangier, a thorough sportsman, was out hunting on one occasion, when a man of low degree who was acting as beater, and, as is usually the case, had his own dogs with him, started a boar in the direction of the Basha, who was sitting near the animal’s expected path ready to receive him. The beater called out, swearing lustily at the Basha, and using every opprobrious term he could think of; adding that if he missed his shot he should never be allowed to fire again!
The Basha fired and killed the boar.
Some little time after, when the beat was finished, the huntsmen assembled as usual, and the Basha asked who it was that had started the boar he had shot. The poor beater, feeling he had exercised the licence of the chase rather too boldly, kept somewhat in the background, but, on this challenge, came forward and acknowledged that it was he who had done so.
‘And what did you shout out to me when the boar took in my direction?’ asked the Basha. The beater, dismayed, was silent. But on the question being repeated, acknowledged having called out, ‘The boar to you—oh blind one!’
‘Only that!’ exclaimed the Basha. ‘Surely I heard you abuse me. Tell me what you said.’