The Uzir stroked his beard, considered for a while and resumed, ‘These are very beautiful maps. Where was that one made?’—pointing, as he spoke, to the map of Great Britain and her foreign possessions.
‘In London,’ was the reply, ‘and it has received the approval of the British Government.’
‘Ah,’ said the Uzir, ‘if we made a map of Morocco, we might also make out, on paper, that we possessed immense territories!’
At last, however, Mr. Hay’s resolution triumphed over all obstacles.
‘Thank God,’ he writes to his wife from the camp at El Kántara on April 18, just a month after his arrival, ‘we have started from Marákesh. The Sultan has requested us to remain here the first night; but to-morrow we move on a good day’s journey, and please God we shall reach Tangier on the sixteenth day. I am altogether pleased with the result of my mission. I have, entre nous, obtained one thousand oxen annually for our troops, in addition to the two thousand which are now exported, and also the abolition of the monopoly of sale of oxen. The negotiation of the Treaty is to be commenced in a few months; in the meantime some reforms are to be brought forward. The basis of the Treaty, which is abolition of monopolies and reduction of duties, is acknowledged; but time is to be given for these slow folk to make alterations in the fiscal system.
‘Apologies have been made for past folly and discourtesy. Everything done to please. A number of small affairs have been arranged. The Sultan gave me an audience yesterday to take leave and was most kind.’
Yet early in the following year H.S.M. repudiated his engagements.
‘Only think,’ Mr. Hay writes in January, 1856, ‘of this Government, after all its solemn engagements to me at the Moorish Court, pretending now to ignore all that has passed and been promised. I have been compelled to enter a protest against them; which has been done in the presence of all my colleagues. Forty days are given to the Sultan to act up to his engagement, and then, nous verrons if these barbarians think they can lie with impunity. After my experience of the past and of various affairs, I expect that, as naughty people say of the ladies, though always denying and refusing to accede, they will give way even when so doing. “Vederemos.”’
Six months later he is still engaged in negotiating the Treaty with Sid Mohammed Khatíb, the special Commissioner appointed to draw up the Treaty. He writes on July 11, 1856, to his wife who had left for England:—
Another letter from Khatíb making fair promises, but treaties are in statû quo. Next week, or about the end of the month, I think we must be at Tetuan to sign, or else tell the Sultan he is a liar. The cholera is about over. I shall do my best to get home in August, for Tangier is a dreary hole to be alone in.