The commencement of the hilly ground has brought us into the district of Shedma and into the northern part of Sus, one of the great divisions of Morocco. The Sus people, like the Shloh and the Rifians, are aborigines: they are a fine race, small limbed, but tall and active. Here the place of the tent is taken by mud castles or walled enclosures, within which they build their huts or small stone houses. As we travelled on, though the sun was high in the heavens, the air got cooler, and I fancied I could sniff the breeze from the sea. The country improved as we advanced: corn-fields amidst the argan trees. Here and there orchards of fig, grape, and other fruit-trees, olive in abundance.
April 21. We were off at daybreak, and rode for two hours through a forest of argan and wild olives. We then entered a barren waste, covered with steep sandhills, which drift like snow with the wind, so as to render it impossible, after a gale, to find a vestige or track of former passengers. These hills are from forty to eighty feet high, almost perpendicular in the ascent and descent, and extend some three or four miles from the coast.
The picturesque town of Mogador, or Suiera, presented itself as we reached the summit of these hills; it lies in a flat sandy plain and the sea washes its walls on the southern and western sides. In winter the sea floods the plain, leaving Mogador as it were an island, except for a causeway over an aqueduct, raised some feet from the ground. On our approach to the town, the batteries saluted me with eleven guns, which was responded to by Her Majesty’s steamer Meteor. The Governor and all the authorities came out to meet us, with two hundred cavalry and three or four hundred infantry; all the accustomed honours and parade were gone through.
Mogador is the European name given to the town of Suiera from a saint’s tomb on an island, about half-a-mile from shore, called Sid Mogdul. The island is fortified, and forms a shelter for shipping from the west and north winds. Mogador was built in the last century, 1760 I think, by Sultan Mohammed Ben Abdallah. An immense sum of money was laid out, as the Sultan built all the merchants’ houses, as well as the walls of the town and many fine Government buildings. It was called by him Suiera, or the picture, from its regularity and handsome appearance when compared with the generality of other Moorish towns. The houses are fine buildings, some of them three stories high; the streets broad and straight. The two main streets run through the town at right angles, so that you can see out of each gate of the town at the same time. There are many solid, neat archways dividing the different quarters of the town.
The walls, batteries, mosques, and public stores are solid and handsome, but partaking rather of the European than Moorish style of architecture, therefore much less interesting to a European eye.
Sultan Mohammed built the town as an emporium for trade with the interior, which it afterwards became; and several firms of British merchants of some wealth had been established here till the bombardment of the place by the French, when they escaped. Owing to the debts due by these persons to the Moorish Government and the loss of property they experienced by the plunder of the town by the wild tribes, they have not returned either to claim their property or to liquidate their debts. At the earnest request of the Governor, I passed the night at this place.
Embarking on board the Meteor on April 22, Mr. Hay reached Tangier on the 24th.
In a letter, written on this expedition to his friend the Hon. A. Gordon, Mr. Hay gives some interesting notes on the habits of the Moors. He says:—
My friend N. was right when he said the Moors do not smoke. The Moors are perhaps the most fanatical of the Mohammedan sect, and much stricter in observance of the laws of their prophet than their brethren in the East. Smoking is looked upon as a sin; for smoking is supposed by them to produce intoxication—or at least a slight aberration of the senses—and can therefore be placed in the same category as wine, which was forbidden by Mohammed solely on that account.
A Mohammedan sage was once asked what was the greatest sin a man could commit. He replied—‘To get drunk,’ and told the following parable: ‘A certain man of good repute drank large potations of the juice of the grape until he became intoxicated and lost his senses. When in that state, he lied, he stole, he committed adultery and murder; none of which sins would he have been capable of committing had he not sinned against the Koran by drinking wine.’ The Moor, however, when he does drink wine, drinks to get drunk, and when he smokes he uses a herb called ‘kif,’ a species of hemp, which produces much the same effect on the senses as opium.