I have been daily expecting a summons ‘to the Court exalted of the Lord’ (par excellence), but His Sherifian Majesty has made a move from the city of Meknes, fearing, I suppose, to be stalemated by the knight Bugeaud and his ten thousand pawns.
By latest accounts from the interior the Sultan has arrived at the united town of Rabat and Salli, the latter famous, as you may remember, in days of yore for its dreaded rovers.
To-morrow I expect a courier from the Sultan which will decide, I hope, the time and place for my visit to His Majesty, and, when en route, I hope to be able to better amuse you by some accounts of this ‘barbarous’ people.
You ask whether I think the Moors will submit to be ‘peaceably invaded’ by the French in their ‘chasse’ of Abd-el-Kader? My answer is in the negative, and I fear that such invasion will produce a most complicated state of affairs throughout this Empire, which might hereafter create a question of grave importance.
The French start from a wrong principle in their mania for destroying Abd-el-Kader; for if this French hydra were killed to-morrow, few months would elapse before another arose. It is to the hostile and fanatical feeling of the inhabitants that they must attribute all their troubles, and until they find a better cure for this feeling than a system of violence and retaliation, battle and murder will never cease in that territory as long as an armed Arab exists.
When Algiers was first taken, my late father, who was an old soldier, and knew the character of the Arab, remarked to the French Chargé d’Affaires, who was boasting of the importance of their newly-acquired colony, that ‘it would prove a very dear conquest,’ and that he felt positive that ‘before twenty years elapsed, a hundred thousand men would be required to hold the country, and that each year would bring fresh demands for troops, not to protect their colonists, but to destroy the Arabs.’
Another evil for the French Government is that the military chiefs, sent to fight in Africa, know that if there be no Abd-el-Kader there will be no Duc d’Isly, no ‘gloire,’ no crosses. Were either Louis Philippe, or Guizot, Governor of Algiers, I could foresee something like future tranquillity; but at present I look forward to a series of events, upon which I could write chapters, that will render necessary either the conquest of Morocco by the French, or the limitation, for another score of years, of their possessions to within a day’s journey of the coast.
I must not be more explicit on this subject, or you would think me perhaps to be trespassing on the limits of what a servant of the public is not justified in writing thus privately. . . .
Here at once, in a three hours’ sail from Gibraltar, you are transported, as if by enchantment, a thousand or two thousand years back, and you find yourself among the same people and the same style of living as you read of in the Scriptures. The Bible and the ‘Arabian Nights’ are your best handbooks, and would best prepare you for the scene. Lane’s most excellent work, on the ‘Customs and Manners of the Egyptians,’ is the most exact work I ever read of Mohammedan customs, and is very applicable to this country.
Mr. Hay started on his mission to Sultan Mulai Abderahman on March 3, 1846. The following extracts are taken from letters addressed to his mother during the journey, and forwarded by her to the Hon. A. Gordon at Mr. Hay’s request.