Pointing to the frigate, I said: ‘That vessel has to return immediately, and I have to report what has been done, in order to stop all preparations for seeking through other means to obtain the satisfaction you have so readily offered. I should have been delighted to have gone with you and should have felt as safe as if amongst my own countrymen. You are a brave race, incapable of doing a wrong to a true friend. I shall never forget the manner in which you have received me.
‘I bid you all farewell. I believe in your promises, even those made by the Benibugaffer. Send messengers at once to the villages on the coast and let them know the promises you have made, which they also must be required to carry out strictly.’
The Chiefs and their followers tried all they could to persuade me to accompany them but finally consented that I should depart, on promising that I would some day revisit them.
Colonel Buceta was surprised to learn the result of my visit, but said the Rifians would never keep faith, and that we should soon hear of fresh acts of piracy. ‘In such case,’ I replied, ‘we shall have to land a force and burn every hamlet and boat on the coast; but I have every hope the Rifians will keep faith.’
They have kept faith, and since that parley near Melilla no vessels, either British or of other nationality, have been captured or molested by the Rifians[27]
It was amongst these wild and lawless Rifians that Mr. Hay found the most thorough sportsmen, and also men capable of great attachment and devotion. Always much interested in the history of this race, in their customs and mode of life, he wrote an interesting account of the tribes which inhabit the north of Morocco and of his personal intercourse with them.
The Rif province extends along the Mediterranean coast to the eastward from a site called Borj Ustrak, in the province of Tetuan, for about a hundred and fifty miles to the stream marked in maps as ‘Fum Ajrud’ (mouth of Ajrud), the northern boundary between Morocco and Algiers.
The Rif country to the southward, inland from the Mediterranean coast, extends about thirty-five miles and on the westward is bordered by the Tetuan province and the mountains of Khamás and Ghamára.
The population of Rif amounts, as far as can be calculated, to about 150,000 souls. The Rifians are a Berber race, and have never been conquered by the various nations—Phœnicians, Romans, Goths, and Arabs—who have invaded Mauritania: they have always maintained their independence; but on the conquest of Morocco by the Arabs, the Rifians accepted the Mohammedan faith, and acknowledged the Sovereigns of Morocco as the Kaliphs of the Prophet.
The country is mountainous, the soil in most parts poor, and though the Rif is rich in iron, copper, and other minerals, there are no roads or means of conveyance to the seaboard. There are large forests of ‘el aris[28],’ which the Rifians convey in their ‘karebs’ (sailing boats) to Tetuan and Tangier. They have no saws, so when a tree is felled it is cut away with a hatchet until a beam or plank is shaped, generally about ten feet long by a foot wide. This timber has a strong aromatic odour, and when not exposed to damp is more durable than oak. It was used for the woodwork of the Alhambra at Granada and other Moorish palaces in Spain, and though many of the Arabesque ornaments in plaster or stucco have fallen into decay and walls have crumbled, this woodwork remains sound.